Every Lover in the Form of Stars
by esplanade
Summary: "John had never really given a damn about art, before Afghanistan. It had always seemed like something that only certain people were allowed to appreciate, people who had studied for years and been trained to pick it apart and understand it. But he had begun to find comfort in it himself. What it boiled down to, the real reason behind his fixation was simple: quiet."
1. Still Left With the River

A/N: This is actually a completed work and will be posted in sets of three chapters each. There are twelve total chapters, and the whole work is around 60k.

Although I didn't write this for anyone except myself, I would be remiss if I didn't extend endless thanks to Clem for enduring my nostalgic rambling and being preoccupied with some of the same specific things as me. It's good knowing there's someone else out there who lives on Diet Coke and nostalgia. I have no idea if she'll actually like this fic or not, but at least she helped get it finished.  
Also thanks to Sarah for putting up with my constant bitching.  
And apologies to Richard Siken.

* * *

 **Still Left With the River**

" _A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it  
in the river/but then he's still left/with the river. A man  
takes his sadness and throws it away/but then he's still left with his hands."_

John had never really given a damn about art, before Afghanistan. It had always seemed like something that only certain people were allowed to appreciate, people who had studied for years and been trained to pick it apart and understand it. But he had begun to find comfort in it himself, even if he knew next to nothing about brushstrokes and art styles, oil paint versus acrylic, traditional or mixed media. It wasn't that he had suddenly developed a great appreciation for the classics, the art school standbys like Michelangelo or Picasso. Instead, what it boiled down to, the real reason behind his fixation was much simpler: quiet.

The world was a noisy place, and unfortunately, that made things rather hard on a jumpy, traumatized soldier. No one quite seemed to understand that, friends coming up and clapping him on the back unannounced, startling him, people dragging him to action movies that were packed with explosions, everyone speaking in such loud voices that every tiny noise seemed thirty times louder, every clink of silverware, every phone, every car engine, all of it deafening and exhausting.

But the museums, they were always calm and quiet. John wasn't sure what exactly inspired silence in museums, but he was grateful. The only other places that were ever so serene were churches, and he had had some difficulties where God was concerned after returning from the war.

So a great deal of his spending money was used for museum admissions. The longer he was home, the less he limited himself to just art museums. He spent hours in the British Museum staring at archaeological artifacts, more hours in the British Library examining the scratchy ink-on-paper that made up Beethoven's own music. Over the months he had listened to hundreds of speeches by hundreds of different docents about Manet and Dali and Pissaro, so many that he could almost recite some of them himself. Once, there was a lovely Renaissance art exhibition in London and he was there so often that he could have mouthed the informative little docent chats along with the docents.

Once or twice, he even tried to get Sholto to come, thinking the time out of the house would do him good (and surely if the museums were soothing enough for John, they would have been for him as well), but to no avail. Afghanistan had wounded some people more irreparably than others. That, he could understand.

For weeks, the London art world buzzed with excitement, about the lost Vermeer at the Hickman. John planned to go see it, of course. It would be foolish not to.

Even though special exhibitions like this one were usually more crowded, the crowd was still expected to speak in hushed voices and make no sudden movements, so John believed it would be safe.

The Hickman was one of the smaller galleries in London, certainly not as famous or as popular as the National Gallery or even the Royal Academy of Arts. It could never afford very prestigious pieces, so its acquisition of a piece of art as important and valuable as a lost Vermeer made the news for weeks during the buildup to the opening of the exhibit. John knew little about Vermeer, an artist who he hadn't seen much of compared to others, but as always, he couldn't keep himself away from the temperature-controlled, hermetic feel of the galleries.

It was an evening opening, winter making the world full dark early on. John took his time walking through the museum, looking at all the works, not just those lucky enough to be in the same room as the Vermeer. The white walls of the Hickman were almost clinical when combined with the cool air.

The main room was more crowded, but still blessedly contained, people standing in groups talking quietly to each other, many people's faces wearing the light of excitement. Some stood near other paintings out of courtesy, so that everyone could see the Vermeer, but no matter where they stood, most people's lines of sight still flitted over to the newly discovered masterpiece.

John stood to the side, looking at the painting from his safe place against an empty section of wall. It was a pretty painting, a dark and lovely cityscape, a collection of stars dotting the night sky, the light reflecting off a body of water in the foreground. John could just make out the signature in the bottom left corner. It had a blurry sort of mystery about it, this painting, like concept art from an old horror movie. It wasn't as big as John had imagined, either, though everyone always assumes great works came in large packages. But this recovered art looked to be about the size of a laptop computer, held up by a terribly simple frame, the only piece of art on its wall. A security guard, a heavyset man with a doughy face, walked calmly around the gallery in an endless loop of the same route, and John wondered just how much a museum security guard could _really_ protect priceless works of art if it came down to it.

"Okay, but what's it a painting _of_ , Sarah?" a voice asked. John glanced to the side, seeing a baffled looking man standing next to a pretty woman, her brown hair pulled up into a ponytail. John had seen the look on the man's face before, someone who didn't understand the appeal of art, and likely never would. But he couldn't crush the woman's enthusiasm. She smiled more fondly at the painting than she probably ever did at the man.

"It's a view of Delft, in the Netherlands, before the explosion."

John did a double-take, glancing between the woman and the painting and trying not to appear as if he was eavesdropping.

"Explosion?"

"Yeah, in the 1650s, there was this gunpowder store that exploded, destroyed most of the city and killed tons of people. So any painting from before the explosion of the city is a real artistic treasure. The Hickman is incredibly lucky to have it, I mean, dear god, it's a _Vermeer_ ," she said, shaking her head in quiet awe. "I heard someone say that it dates to the 1640s, which in historical terms makes it feel like it was from the day before the disaster."

"But it's just a picture of a city skyline?"

The woman just rolled her eyes and looked back at the Vermeer. John smiled to himself. Little views into regular people's lives, those were just little extras that came with frequenting these museums. Everyone was there for a reason, whether it was artistic passion or needing silence or because they were dragged along by their girlfriend.

He leaned on his cane, even though the pressure of its handle had been making his palm ache. The limp, the pain, it had yet to go away. He was beginning to learn to live with it, just as he had learned to like art. He shoved his free hand into his coat pocket, balling it into a fist and breathing deeply, waiting for the spasm to pass. If he focused hard enough, he could turn his thoughts to something harmless, something mundane.

 _I'll maybe get a coffee mug or something from the gift shop, with the painting on it. That would be nice to have. Maybe a magnet._

It took him far too long to realize that the shuddering explosion that coursed through the gallery wasn't a flashback.

... ... ...

He was aware of the smell of blood and fire before he even opened his eyes. And yet still, the actual sight of said blood and fire was jarring. The gallery was practically obliterated, walls crumbling, smoke curling in the air around the rubble, lights out except for what could run on generators, the ominous red glow of the exit sign across the room a strangely threatening beacon.

And then he registered the bodies as he pushed himself up on his hands. Pieces of people lying everywhere, bits of skin and skull. Some bodies intact, eyes still wide open and staring at nothing, motionless. Some may have been unconscious, others may have been buried in the rubble, but all John could see were the haunted lifeless faces that seemed to greet him at every turn. Once or twice, the faces were familiar, men he'd known in Afghanistan who hadn't been as lucky as he was, and he had to shut his eyes, hands to his face, to make the images go away.

Cuts all over him, a stinging on his face from the ripped skin, and tears in his jeans that were beginning to grow read around the edges with blood. Head pounding, ears ringing, and he could barely tell what was real and what wasn't.

 _Shell shocked._

There was no sound. Of course, realistically there was, but John had reached a point where any noise in the gallery was somehow muffled and distant. _Explosion related hearing damage?_ He ran through a list of conditions in his head before he could stop himself, the doctor in him trying to regain control. _Concussion? Blood loss? Traumatic brain injury?_ But even these thoughts felt like background noise.

He looked wildly around the gallery, suddenly wondering where the rescue workers were. The room was in apocalyptic disarray, but there were no rescue workers. There was just smoke and broken things and people who were probably past help anyway.

John slowly shoved himself to his feet, his cane gone. But he was relatively steady, too disoriented to even notice if his leg was hurting at all. He turned in a circle – _how do I get out of here?_ – surveying the damage and always coming back to the glowing exit sign across the room.

 _Be a soldier. Just stay alive._

He took his first tentative step toward the exit, trying to make the room quit spinning, reaching out for handholds and finding nothing more than what appeared to be a section of caved in ceiling. Two steps later and John found a person in his way, a dark-skinned man lying on the floor, a piece of the ceiling jutting out of one of his legs. The other leg, however, was missing almost entirely, blown off above the knee, flesh and bone exposed and charred. It was such a horrible warlike image that John forced a few deep breaths – which stung, _broken rib?_ – into his lungs as he considered how to get past the man. Part of him wanted to help, wanted to staunch the blood steadily seeping from what used to be the man's thigh, but the other part of him knew better. He had seen bleeders like that before, and if the man's face was any indicator, he didn't stand a chance. John bent down, falling a little too hard on his knees, and reached out to the man, teasing the destroyed fabric of his jeans away from the amputation. There was no way he would ever be able to stop the bleeding, no way to fix what had been done.

The man was still alive, but only barely, his skin clammy and his hands shaking, his eyes wide and wild and terrified. The look was familiar. The man knew damn well how this was going to end. He reached out a hand, grabbing John by the arm, panicked and insistent, leaving a bloody hand print on the dark cloth of John's jacket. But he did this to get John's attention, not John's comfort, and once John looked down at him he drew his hand away. Both of his hands held out in front of him, the man shakily twisted a ring off one of his fingers, pushing it toward John, the blood-smeared gold giving off the faintest glint in the dim light.

John shook his head, tried to gesture that he couldn't take it, but the man continued to shove the ring at him. The man tried to sit up, nearly screaming in pain, and John reached out to take the ring from him, saying over and over, "Okay, okay." The man leaned back, breathing deeply before grabbing John's hand in his and saying, "Baker Street. 221, by the shop." John just nodded, placating.

"Yeah, sure, Baker Street." Even as he said it, the man could stand the blood loss no longer, and John watched the light fade from his eyes as the man's hand slipped away from his.

John shoved the ring into his pocket without thinking, not having time to worry about it now. He stood on shaky legs, thinking to himself that at least he'd worn dark clothes, so the blood wouldn't show as badly.

It was the most excruciating journey of his life, staggering across the gallery, now and then hearing moans from undetectable dark corners of the room, stumbling around purses and shattered phones and shoes. All the while, he searched and searched for a reason that would explain the lack of rescue teams, the lack of any sort of help, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be the last man on earth.

When the hand grabbed his ankle, he briefly, irrationally thought it was the dark-skinned man come back from the dead. But no. It was the security guard, the one who'd been patrolling the room, trapped under a large chunk of wall or ceiling, gasping for breath, rambling about "the painting." And that was when John remembered.

He looked around at the walls of the gallery. Some of the paintings were mostly intact, obviously farther away from the blast site. Some walls had been so totally ruined that there was no hope for the art that had hung on them. All that art, blown to pieces.

The security guard continued rambling, the only real intelligible words, "The Vermeer." John's head was pounding, but still he tried to remember where the painting had been, finally finding its wall. He didn't look down when he heard the gurgling speech, the horrid sound that came with death. As if the guard had been able to transfer his own thoughts to John, suddenly all John could think about was the Vermeer.

It wasn't out of the way, so he pushed his way to where the painting had once been. The wall was blank, but on the ground, he saw the canvas. Its frame had been shattered, one stubborn edge still clinging to the painting itself. He reached down, ripping the last scrap of wood from it, wiping his hands on his clothes before he picked the painting up, scared to death at the thought of getting blood on a Vermeer. He had to get it out of there. It would burn, or be crushed and ruined, if he let it stay.

Reaching the exit sign was hazy, and he had to carefully set the painting down out of harm's way while he pushed debris aside so he could open the door. He tucked the Vermeer under his arm and forced the door open, the night air instantly clearer, even though he could still smell the smoke on the breeze. But it was better than the dark and threatening blackness of the gallery.

He walked slowly up the side alley outside the door, making his way up toward the street in front of the museum. Up ahead he could see yellow tape and the seizure-inducing flash of police lights. The crowd was back behind the tape, the area immediately around the museum cordoned off. When John reached the tape, he stepped behind it with the rest of the masses, watching the emergency vehicles and police work outside the front doors of the Hickman.

"Why aren't any of them going inside?" he asked the man next to him.

"There's more than one bomb," he said. He was a wiry character, dark hair and eyes, in a white T-shirt that seemed pristine after the dirt and grime of the gallery. The man didn't seem to notice John, not really. He, like all of the other bystanders, was far too preoccupied to tear his eyes away from the spectacle. "They had been doing rescue work, but they found the other bomb, so they called everyone out till they could make it safe again." John thought that the man seemed a little too happy about all this, but chocked it up to human beings being macabre and terrible, always gawking at the disaster, never able to look away.

John could have been stark naked and no one would have noticed him. And he took some comfort in that fact as he gave one last glance over the scene before turning and walking off down the street.

... ... ...

John was on the verge of passing out when he finally let himself into his tiny room. It was little more than a hotel, just a bedroom and bathroom, but he had been incapable of handling much more since returning from Afghanistan. He set the painting down on top of his dresser, pulling his coat off and draping it over a chair. He turned on every single light, as if that would somehow make the evening more cheerful.

He knew he couldn't do anything until he got the death off him. His clothes were a mess, beyond help, really. They would be discarded at a later date.

In the harsh glare of the bathroom light, he looked himself over, finding cut after cut, including a very impressive one at his temple that made him wince when he brought a finger to it. But he supposed that he was untouched compared to a lot of people.

The blood washed away in the shower as if the whole disaster had never even happened.

He found clean clothes in one of his suitcases and sat down on the edge of his bed, feeling only marginally better. And he lasted as long as it took to dress before he thought he would go crazy in the room.

Outside, the streets were mostly empty, due in part to the late hour, and, he was sure, due in part to the Hickman bombing. It was easy enough for him to slip unnoticed into a pharmacy on the next block, hood of his jacket up to try and conceal the cut. The other customers didn't pay him any mind. He was a ghost to them.

Still, he felt jittery as he picked up first aid supplies, feeling like any second someone would question him or worse, recognize him as having been at the Hickman. But that was irrational, he kept telling himself, grabbing a small home sewing kit and hunting down the aisles for easy food.

By the time he returned to his room, he was a nervous wreck, on the verge of a full panic, and it took nearly fifteen minutes for him to calm down.

He sat again on the edge of his bed, reaching for the remote on the side table to turn the television on. All the major networks were reporting live from the Hickman, detailing what little authorities knew.

"Earlier this evening, during the opening of the Lost Vermeer exhibit, disaster struck the up and coming Hickman Gallery when a bomb went off in the museum. When emergency services arrived on the scene, a second bomb was found, and crews are still working to make sure that the second bomb is properly defused. This has resulted in nearly all emergency personnel being removed from the building. It is unknown at this time how many victims are still inside, and whether those still inside are alive or dead. Emergency personnel have already reported three deaths, and many more taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. Little else is known at this time." Behind the reporter, John could still see the hordes of people, which had only grown since he'd left the scene.

What if all the people he had seen at the gallery were dead now? What if he was the only survivor from their room?

His head was pounding, an incessant headache, and as a doctor, he logically knew he should go get checked out. But also as a doctor, he decided it wasn't worth it, that surely he was fine. He had had worse, after all. Just exhausted. Some sleep would help.

But sleep never came that night.

... ... ...

John stayed in his room for days, ordering in whatever food could be delivered so he wouldn't have to face the rest of the world with his healing cuts and bruises. He looked like he had seen far better days, like someone who had gotten in a particularly nasty street fight. There was no way he could go outside. Or so he told himself. Food delivered, newspaper delivered just outside his door every morning. He had everything he needed.

It was two days before he was able to sleep, and at that point, it was less a matter of falling asleep and more of a matter of collapsing from exhaustion. He expected more nightmares than he had, finally deciding that Afghanistan had raised the threshold for what his subconscious considered frightening.

He read the newspaper obsessively every day and became a television news addict, tracking any and all developments on the Hickman bombing. Everyone was upset, not just because of the tragedy itself and the loss of lives resulting from it, but also because of all the works of art that were destroyed.

"As teams scour the Hickman site in desperate attempts to recover some of the paintings, the crown jewel of the gallery, a newly discovered Vermeer, remains missing, presumed destroyed."

John's eyes flitted to his dresser, where the painting still sat, untouched for days. It haunted him, but he told himself that it was safer here than it was in the wreckage of the Hickman.

But it shouldn't be so near a lamp, he decided, and he got to his feet to pick the painting up from the dresser, setting it on the bed for a moment while he dragged out his largest suitcase. He left some clothes in it for padding, but threw most of the contents onto the room's floor. Gently, he lifted the painting and lowered it into the suitcase, putting a few more articles of clothing on top of it to cushion it. He zipped the suitcase and slid it under the bed. There. No damage from light or heat or anything.

He told himself over and over that day that he needed to give the painting back, but every time the thought occurred to him, he worried that if he came forward with it that he would be arrested for theft instead of thanked for preserving the Vermeer. And whether or not he would admit to himself, over the days he'd spent in seclusion, he'd begun to feel as if the Vermeer was somehow attached to him now, some extension of himself. Whenever he asked himself why he took it in the first place, he would rationalize: _I probably had a concussion and was traumatized and had just survived an explosion that triggered the hell out of me and I was trying to save it I was trying to do the right thing_. But then when he asked himself why he still had it, all logical answers about arrests aside, his most frequent thought was: _I just don't know what else to do_. It was a weak answer, and he knew it, but his times of greatest anxiety had been when he wasn't near the painting, like that first night when he'd gone to the pharmacy, or the fleeting seconds in the hallway picking up the newspaper. The more distance between himself and the Vermeer, the worse the entire situation made him feel.

It wasn't as if such a scenario was ever covered in med school or basic training.

At least he could be grateful that no one in London knew he was even at the Hickman that night. His phone had remained as quiet as ever, no concerned acquaintances to annoy him, no questions to be asked. And since no police or other officials had shown up at his door for his firsthand account of the bombing, he began to believe he was in the clear. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss it. There was something sort of comforting about the fact that no one seemed to remember that he existed. It made his life easier. No one knew he was there that night. Security cameras were likely all destroyed, and he had paid in cash and hadn't seen anyone in days. He had disappeared.

A few days after the bombing, the newspaper did a huge front page story about it all, a memoriam for the victims. "The greatest tragedy of the decade," the journalist called it. And it did seem awfully tragic when put in this context, a list of those dead in the explosion. The paper had gotten pictures of nearly all of them, from friends and family members he assumed, and had their names and ages under their photos. A grim thing to see first thing in the morning. John didn't even try to count how many photos he saw. There were so many.

He looked over the different faces. A woman in pink named Jennifer Wilson. The owner of the gallery, a severe looking woman named Wenceslas. Further down the list was the dark-skinned man who had given the ring to John, Chatterjee they called him. And Alex Woodbridge, the desperate dying security guard who had told him to take the Vermeer.

 _Well he didn't explicitly tell you to take it. He was just babbling about it._

John pushed the thought away.

There was a press conference on television later that night, headed by a curly-haired woman named Donovan and a DI named Lestrade. They talked about how the police were classifying the bombing as a terror strike, that threat levels in London were critical and that security would be tightened in what he called "vulnerable places" (other museums, major tourist attractions, government buildings). The police weren't sure who was to blame, and John got the impression that they were almost desperately grasping for leads in a case where no leads were likely to present themselves. They didn't even seem all that sure that it actually _was_ a terrorist act. It could have just as easily been an isolated madman, or a particularly vicious group of garden variety monsters. But _terror strike_ sounded quite a bit more official than just _bomber_.

John glanced again at the paper surrounding him on his bed, the DI talking on and on about what people could do if they wanted to help the victims and families of victims, charity of all levels and standing in solidarity. John just tuned him out, staring at the picture of the Chatterjee man staring up at him.

And that was when he really remembered the ring as an actual object instead of merely a fleeting thought.

He stared at his ruined coat across the room, still slung over the chair where he'd left it that first night. John had considered trying to repair it as he had attempted to do with his shirt with the home sewing kit he'd bought – how different could it be from sutures, really? – but in the end he hadn't even bothered. The tear was too large, the cloth too soaked in blood. It had been far easier to leave it where it was, trying to forget it even existed at all.

John crossed the room, reaching into the pocket of the coat, pulling the ring out. Safe and sound. He rinsed the blood off of it in the bathroom and held it up to the light. It was pretty, gold band with a red stone. Not a wedding ring, just a regular piece of jewelry. But pretty. He walked back into his room, setting the ring down on his bedside table, trying to remember what the man had said to him in the gallery. Baker Street. 220-something.

A few hours later he finally remembered: 221. And something about a shop.

He sighed. He had slept fitfully the night before, and while he hadn't noticed any pain in his leg while escaping the museum, he certainly noticed after the fact, the same old pain creeping up on him with a vengeance. A cruel joke, he thought, since his cane was part of the gallery rubble. He chided himself for not buying a new one from the pharmacy that night, but these practical thoughts kept being pushed from his head by the ring. He would have to deal with it at some point. It wasn't like the painting. He had been given clear instructions on what to do with the ring to an extent.

Thinking that perhaps returning the ring to its rightful owner would somehow ease his conscience, that it might help him sleep at night to put at least part of this to rest, he turned the television off and swore to himself that whenever he could bring himself to leave his room next, that he would go deal with the man's ring.

But when his conscience asked what he should do about the painting, he ignored it, and did his best to try to fall asleep.


	2. In a Car With a Beautiful Boy

**In a Car With a Beautiful Boy**

" _You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell  
you that he loves you, but he loves you."_

It took four tries before he was actually able to go farther than the end of the hall.

John had spent hours preparing to leave, originally intending to go early that morning, but by the time he finally worked up the nerve, it was already later in the afternoon. He walked down the street, the ring heavy in his pocket, the pain in his leg breaking through despite the painkillers he'd taken earlier.

He should have bought a new cane, but he had reached a state of paranoia where he didn't feel he should go anywhere he didn't absolutely have to go, and for the moment, the ring was his main priority. More than anything, John wanted to be rid of the damn thing, even if it was just to try and make the dying man's face disappear from his dreams. Put the ghosts to rest. He came up with all sorts of scenarios in his head, the most prominent of which involved the loved ones of the dead man getting his body and them wondering how a bomb blast could make a ring vanish from his finger. It was irrational of course, to think that such scenarios would lead the police to his door, but still it nagged at him every time his thoughts wandered.

When he finally found the address on Baker Street, he was convinced he was in the wrong place, as the address led to what appeared to be a sandwich shop, closed and locked up, dark inside. He stared at it from the pavement, feeling like it was watching him somehow, the dark stillness behind the plate glass making him uneasy. He almost turned and walked away, but he finally noticed the residential door tucked to the side of the shop, a gold "221B" gleaming from the dark wood.

After much hesitation, he walked up to the door, knocking. It occurred to him that he didn't even know who he was supposed to see about this ring, what he was supposed to tell them. _Hello, stranger, a dying man sent me here. I'm sorry for your loss, here's your jewelry back._

 _Why didn't I think this through?_

Before he could back away and leave, the door opened. John wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't the little old lady standing inside in the shadows. She was the human personification of a cozy kitchen, cookies baking in the oven. But she also looked like she hadn't slept much more than John had in the last few days.

"Can I help you, dear?"

John opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, and he stumbled over speech for what felt like quite a long time before he just reached into his pocket and held the ring out to her. She took it, confused at first, and then the recognition spread across her face.

"The explosion. At the Hickman?" John said. Without looking away from the ring the woman nodded. "A man there told me to bring that here." She nodded again, stepping aside and waving for him to come in.

... ... ...

The woman's kitchen suited her. She sat John down at the table and went about making some tea, introducing herself as Martha Hudson. John introduced himself as well, even though the paranoid corner of his brain didn't want anyone to know he had been there. While initially John had wanted to drop the ring and run, something about the old woman made him feel a little calmer, so he found he didn't mind the impromptu tea as much as he thought he would. She sat across from him, sliding plates of biscuits to the middle of the little table between them, wrapping her hands around her mug.

"He ran the shop. You saw it outside?" John nodded. "I don't know who's going to take over it now. I called his family. Maybe some of them will keep it open. Otherwise I don't know what they'll do. Turn it over to the highest bidder I guess. I know it's just a little restaurant, but I'd gotten rather used to it being there, you know? I can't imagine what else they would put there." John didn't know what to say. This wasn't his world. But he let the woman continue. "He was a nice man. I was heartbroken to hear what happened to him. On the news. Such a terrible accident."

"I wasn't sure what he wanted to happen to the ring," John said, gesturing at it where it sat on the tabletop, "but I thought there would be someone around here who would know."

She smiled. "He was a bit of a flirt, to tell you the truth. He would talk about buying me jewelry if he ever had that kind of income. And sometimes when he would talk like that he would say things like, 'Since I might not ever have that kind of money, I should just give you this.' " She picked the ring up, turning it around in her hand. "It became a sort of joke with us, about this ring. It was the only article of jewelry he owned as far as I know. I'll check and see if his family wants it."

"But he wanted you to have it."

"I don't know about that. Probably he knew if he sent you to me that it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle or stolen. But maybe he did want me to have it. He was a boisterous man, you know, which was charming, but it also meant it was rather difficult to tell when he was being serious or when he was joking around. A very vivacious man."

"It's a shame."

"It really is. What about you, dear? You were in the same gallery, yes?"

"Yes."

"I hope you didn't lose any loved ones. I've seen so many families just broken into pieces from the loss."

"Tell you the truth, I don't have many loved ones, and I was there alone, so I suppose in that regard I'm luckier than most people there were."

She shook her head sadly in tired disbelief. "Who would do such a thing? Bomb an art museum. Just terrible. It's a miracle any people survived at all."

"How many survived it, do you think? I've only seen death counts. No one seems to even be mentioning the survivors."

"Well there weren't many, from what I gather. Not many survivors to talk about. And I've been trying to keep track of the story on the television and in the papers, but it's such a hard thing to read. You know, I don't think I've seen any mention of you, in any of the stories I mean. Seems like they've interviewed most of the people who lived."

"I've been trying to stay out of the limelight," he said with a tense smile. "Not really my strong suit, interviews. Just been keeping to myself."

"Certainly can't blame you for that. I imagine it's hard going into work, with people asking questions, though."

"I'm not even working right now, which I guess I'm grateful for given the circumstances. I just got back from Afghanistan a while ago."

"Oh you poor thing, come home from an active war zone and walk right into a bombing."

"At least I felt like I was trained to handle it."

But he wasn't. Not really. And that was becoming more apparent with every passing day.

... ... ...

John never thought he would come back to Baker Street ever again, but somehow, it ended up a normal part of his day. He had had trouble going back to any of the art museums; he was still associating the once-calming locales with bombings. And he had felt more at ease in the old woman's kitchen than anyplace else, and so it became routine. She seemed to enjoy the company, and she never expected him to talk. There was something soothing about being able to just drink some tea in peace and listen to someone discuss mundane matters, because in his own room, he always fell back into the bad habit of reading the papers or watching the news, thriving unhealthily on any scrap of information about the Hickman bombing.

After nearly two weeks of this, Mrs. Hudson cut off her own train of thought to say, "Oh! Before I forget! I was wondering where you're living, since you said you only recently came home?"

"Just some very basic rooms. Why?"

"Well I've been trying to rent the flat upstairs, and there's another young man who was looking for someone to split it with. It wouldn't cost much, and I'd like to think they're rather comfortable rooms."

"Who is this man?"

And as if timed by God, the kitchen door opened, and in stepped a dramatic looking figure in a dark coat. Mrs. Hudson started momentarily at the noise, but soon got to her feet to greet the man. They didn't look similar enough to be mother and son, but she doted on him like a mother would. The two of them greeted each other, John sitting quietly at his usual seat at the table, waiting.

The man looked at him over Mrs. Hudson, his eyes narrowing in concentration. Nodding toward John, he asked her, "Is this the man who's been coming around like a lost dog?"

Mrs. Hudson introduced the two of them, explaining to John that this man, this Sherlock Holmes, was the one looking to rent the flat upstairs and would he like to see it? John blindly agreed, a bit floored by Sherlock in a way he didn't even understand. Captivating, yes, and beautiful, but John got the impression that there were darker places inside Sherlock Holmes than perhaps even inside himself.

He couldn't possibly be for real. And yet he was.

John followed him upstairs – slowly with the way his leg had been today – and Sherlock led him into the flat. It was a homey place, felt like a place Mrs. Hudson would own. It was certainly a step up from the bleak industrial strength beige of his current rooms. Better location too. He was so distracted thinking about moving that he didn't notice at first that Sherlock was standing by the window, staring at him like a science project.

"A war veteran, yes. But what else?"

"Sorry?" He briefly wondered if Mrs. Hudson had brought him up, discussed him with this man that she was obviously relatively close to. But the look on Sherlock's face said that he had known nothing, his information about John was coming from elsewhere, somewhere internal judging by the look in his eyes. But how was that possible?

"What else? What else _recently_?"

"I'm sorry, I don't think I quite get what you mean."

"The Hickman, yes?"

John froze, incapable of speech for what felt like the longest time. "How do you know that? I wasn't in any of the papers, and none of the police have come to talk to me about it and I haven't given any interviews. No one even knows I was there, there's no record of me." He stopped himself, realizing how much he sounded like a guilty criminal trying to defend himself against a heinous accusation.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows at this rambling, and then said simply, "Well you look traumatized, freshly traumatized, and the only large scale traumatic event I've heard of lately has been the Hickman explosion. Logical leap. Half the city seems to be walking around in an identical haze because of it." John felt foolish as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Of course. It was stupid to forget just how many people had been affected. The city had treated it like a great tragedy that touched everyone, not just those who were in the gallery themselves.

His relief that Sherlock's logic was so straightforward only lasted for a few seconds when he remembered the painting stashed in his room, his artistic security. If this man, this stranger, could read him so easily despite his efforts to appear calm and well-adjusted, what else could he see?

"Something else, too, maybe," Sherlock said in response to the look on John's face. He instantly put on the blank mask of a soldier.

"There's nothing else big and interesting about me besides the war and the Hickman."

Sherlock shrugged. "Say what you will. People can never keep secrets from me, anyway. I find out everything eventually, not out of wanting to pry, mind you, but out of inevitability. But if you'd like to insist that you have no interesting qualities or experiences, by all means, Dr. Watson, continue."

 _What the fuck._

"Dinner?" he asked, tugging a pair of gloves onto his hands as he strode across the room.

"Dinner?"

"Well how can one tolerate living with someone if they can't even manage a meal with them?"

John could hardly argue with that logic, and since Sherlock was already heading down the stairs, he thought it best to follow.

... ... ...

The restaurant was a small Italian place within walking distance of 221B. Sherlock always seemed to be a single step ahead, constantly correcting himself, falling back into step with John without comment while talking about other things. He acted as if he had known John his entire life, like he was picking up where he'd left off in a conversation with an old friend. He had no idea what to say. But Sherlock didn't seem to mind that.

He was enigmatic, rather intriguing, if John was being honest. He felt foolish, though, allowing any part of himself to be so taken with this stranger. But there was _something_. John didn't know _what_ exactly, but the longer he sat at the restaurant with him, the more he thought that maybe it didn't matter _what_.

Most importantly, he was the first person John had encountered who did not seem to pity him upon finding out about his military past or his presence at the Hickman bombing. In fact, it didn't come up at all after they left the flat. Instead Sherlock talked about all manner of things, showing particular enthusiasm for crime. And John couldn't help but get invested, wanting to know the results of the cases Sherlock told him about.

What was even more impressive was how Sherlock reached these results. His deductive process was astounding, the way he reasoned through things was just extraordinary.

"That's how you knew all that stuff about me," John said, setting his fork down. Sherlock had not touched a bite of his food. Instead he just smiled, his fingers steepled and his elbows leaning on the table.

"Of course."

"Amazing."

Sherlock's smile vanished, replaced with confusion. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"The way you do these things. It's amazing," John said with a little laugh, shaking his head.

Sherlock paused, his eyes blank. "You think so?"

"Well yeah." Sherlock frowned a little, not believing him. "Why, what do people usually think about it?"

"They either think that I'm a bastard, a freak, or they've come to expect it because it helps them. Of course, I don't tend to think of it as amazing myself – it's just logic after all – so it's easy enough to tune the rest of them out."

"Doesn't it ever bother you?"

"I'm used to it."

"That's not what I asked."

Sherlock smiled, just a little, and then stood and pulled on his coat. "Done?"

"Yeah – hey wait!" Sherlock stopped with one hand on the restaurant door. "Don't we need to pay?"

The smile broadened. "Got the owner off a murder charge. Needless to say, I eat free."

"You didn't eat at all."

"A detail. Coming?" John followed. They stepped out into the cold night, an abrupt but not unpleasant shock. "I play the violin. I hope that won't be a problem."

"You assume I'm going to take the room?"

"Well, aren't you?"

John laughed, and it occurred to him that Sherlock Holmes had given him more causes to laugh than he had had in months.

"I'm actually pretty fond of the violin."

... ... ...

While John expected to continue hearing about the cases Sherlock worked, he never imagined he'd be included in them. But soon he found himself chasing after a serial killer. He wasn't sure why Sherlock enjoyed his company on these cases, since he wasn't exactly filled with deductive prowess, but whatever the reason, he was glad. It was the most fun he'd had in _years_.

The only time Sherlock mentioned his time in Afghanistan again was when he pointed out that the limp he had seen when he met John was now gone.

They would take cabs nearly everywhere when they were working cases, though, so it wasn't as if he was walking long distances anyway.

For a few weeks John felt like he'd walked into some sort of surreal state, an entirely different world from the one he'd known for so many years. This really was this man's life, running after murderers and taking over hospital labs, playing music at all hours and hardly eating unless reminded. Sherlock Holmes was an anomaly, that much was clear.

Sometimes, while riding to a crime scene, John had moments where he genuinely wondered if he was for real or not. Sherlock would lean against the window, his face illuminated by the street lights like candlelight on marble, and it seemed impossible that such a person existed. Sure, he could be exasperating, could be callous and completely disdainful of social conventions. But he was incredible.

Incredible and real.

Some days John could barely keep up with him, true. He seemed to operate on limitless energy when the situation called for it, only lapsing into exhaustion when all loose ends were properly tied up. But god, even when John was running on no sleep for days, even when he went without eating, when he lived on nothing but adrenaline and Sherlock, even then he was happier than he had been as a doctor, as a soldier, and even simply as a regular human being. Because you couldn't be a regular human being with Sherlock Holmes. You became something different, something stronger, something more miraculous than anyone could fathom. His world was not like everyone else's world. His world was magic.

He was an addiction. But it was better than alcohol or drugs.

If he was going to develop an addiction to cope with the way his life had turned out, then he thought that Sherlock Holmes was a pretty good one to have.

... ... ...

His first few weeks with Sherlock had been such a whirlwind that it took him longer than planned to get truly settled in Baker Street. When he'd left his old rooms, he had done so quickly, throwing most of his things into various bags and suitcases with little thought. The only thing he had packed carefully was the painting, still cushioned by clothing in its suitcase. After meeting Sherlock, he had spent only a single night in his old rooms before leaving entirely, and as soon as that place was behind him, he felt that maybe, even if only in some very small way, the Hickman was behind him too.

One night, John sat up in his bedroom in Baker Street, going through messages on his phone before reaching to turn out the light. But he stopped.

His closet door was open, and near it sat the suitcase that held the Vermeer. He had had to open it to get a shirt and had forgotten to shut it all the way, the edge of the canvas just visible under the clothes. John's eyes flitted to his door, checking to see that it was closed even though he knew damn well it was. The painting related paranoia had been mostly kept at bay since he moved, his brain usually too preoccupied with whatever was going on with Sherlock to think about it much. But in the silence of his bedroom, it crept up on him again.

He stood from the edge of his bed and crossed the room, teasing the clothes away from the painting and lifting it gingerly out of the suitcase. He laid it on the end of his bed and stared at it, the night sky looking all the more darker in the dim light of his bedside lamp. Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he sighed.

John had chided himself for still having the damn thing, but had reached a point where he wasn't sure what else to do with it besides keep it. What if he came forward with it and got sent to prison for having it at all? Never mind that he probably saved it from a great deal of likely irreparable damage when he removed it from the museum. He imagined the police would only see it as art theft. His intentions wouldn't matter. And it wasn't as if he could just leave it somewhere for someone to find. He certainly couldn't sell it, since the whole city knew about the painting. And besides, what good would money do him anyway?

The unfortunate reality, which was beginning to sink into his stomach the more he thought about it, was that the only way to both keep the painting safe and to keep himself from potential prison sentences was to keep it. In that moment, he despised the Vermeer. He even went so far as to despise the war that had made him such a mess that he had effectively been led to the Vermeer. So many terrible little pieces of fate had aligned for him to be stuck here with the painting. Sherlock would say that the circumstances had given him a psychological dependence on the piece of art, which may have been true.

And finally, he thought about Sherlock.

The thoughts hit him so quickly he had to sit down, lowering himself to the floor since the painting was on his bed. Sherlock had no concept of personal space or privacy. Hell, he'd already managed to hack into John's laptop with ease. John doubted that Sherlock would care about the painting itself – the way he was, he might not even know what the painting looked like – and it was unlikely that he would respect the law enough to bother turning John in for having it. But still, Sherlock knowing about the Vermeer in their flat was a risk. Even if Sherlock wouldn't intentionally give him away, even if he couldn't care less, him knowing was still a risk. A risk that John couldn't take.

He would have to be more careful; he couldn't just leave the painting in an open suitcase, poorly concealed.

John stood up and gathered all of the clothes from the suitcase, shoving them into his dresser drawers or throwing them quickly over hangers in the closet. He grabbed an extra set of sheets and laid one folded sheet on the bottom of the suitcase. The other he used to wrap the painting itself before laying it in the suitcase and zipping it shut. He pushed his clothes aside and slid the suitcase to the deepest corner of his closet, tucking it out of the way, carefully arranging the clothes and other luggage in front of it. Out of sight, out of mind. Sherlock had no regard for privacy, true, but he also had no reason to even bother looking _for_ John's suitcase, let alone looking _in_ it. Sherlock had already passed on one of his bits of wisdom: the art of disguise is knowing how to hide in plain sight. So John would take the advice and keep the painting safe in the only way he knew how.

While he was just on the verge of sleep nearly an hour later, he jolted awake, his memory throwing him a harsh reminder.

 _What about the bystander?_

He had told himself over and over that no one knew he was at the Hickman the night of the explosion. But there was one person, wasn't there? One person who knew. The man in the white shirt, the one who had been staring at the proceedings with such fascination. The one he had even gone so far as to speak to in his mentally addled state.

Suddenly he was filled with a flood of what-ifs.

What if the police started really trying to account for all the art? For the status of the lost Vermeer? What if instead of assuming it had been destroyed they believed it was stolen? What if they had a call line and what if this man remembered John, remembered him walking away with the painting. What if the man saw it as an opportunity to make cash from reward money? But surely he wouldn't remember John, right? It was busy and dark and crowded. People get distracted during disasters. What were the chances of some random bystander remembering him?

But then, John remembered the bystander. So why wouldn't the bystander remember him as well?

It was one thing when John operated under the belief that no one could place him at the Hickman that night. But the very thought of a single man out there possibly holding the key to his hypothetical arrest was staggering.

He didn't sleep well at all after that. And for days after, he jumped at every noise, his heart skipping beats any time he saw lights outside his window, thinking that the police had somehow found him, were coming to take him away. Once or twice Sherlock even noticed how distracted he was, and he looked concerned (or rather, what passed for concern with Sherlock). John always shrugged it off, but in the back of his mind, all he heard was a chorus of:

 _What if the bystander remembers?_


	3. A Niche in His Chest

**A Niche in His Chest Where a Heart Would Fit Perfectly**

" _Other parts were still only waiting/for something to happen,  
something grand, but isn't it/always about me,/he keeps saying,  
though he's talking about the only heart he knows -/He could build  
a city. Has a certain capacity. There's a niche in his chest/where  
a heart would fit perfectly/and he thinks if he could just maneuver  
one into place -/well then, game over."_

John was just approaching his front door when Sherlock opened it, and, without a word, grabbed John by the shoulder and turned him around, forcing him down their front steps back onto the pavement.

"Come on. We have a case." He stepped up to the curb and flagged down a cab.

"But isn't the client inside?"

"No, this case is with the police." He pulled the door open, waiting for John to get in. Knowing he wouldn't elaborate until John did what he wanted, he gave up and slid across the back seat.

"The police?" Sherlock took his seat and pulled the door shut, giving an address to the driver before turning to John, wearing that expression of _do keep up_ that John had already had cause to grow accustomed to. "I thought you were a consulting detective, you know, freelance?"

"I consult with the police when they need help, which is relatively often, unfortunately. They made it longer without my assistance than they usually do, these last few weeks. Normally they've called me in multiple times, much to their chagrin. We're going to meet a DI I work with on a regular basis."

"If you'll have the Met there, why do you need me?"

"Well someone has to keep me from assaulting the man on forensics." He grinned. "Though to be quite honest, you would likely be more help to me than most of the officers on the police force."

"I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or if it should make me worried about the competency of the force."

"Best not to think too hard on it."

The cab finally came to a stop near a car park, cordoned off with tape. There were multiple police cars and what looked like hoards of law enforcement and forensics officials wandering around. Everything seemed to be a shade of gray, the sky fading into the asphalt, even the police officers' clothes bled into the puddles of standing water. The only spot of true color came from the bright blue shirt of the dead man lying in the middle of the car park. John watched as Sherlock got out of the cab, his coat becoming another point of gray in the monochrome sea. This time he didn't wait to see if John followed; he knew damn well he would.

The sound of tires on gravel grew fainter behind him as the cab drove away. Sherlock had come up on a pair of officers whose backs were to John. He spoke with them, his lips moving rapidly and his face wearing the expression it always did when he felt intellectually superior, a sort of condescending tilt of the head that most people found insufferable. It only made John smile.

As he approached, standing beside Sherlock, he took a good look at the two officers. And as their faces registered with his memory, he felt the familiar sensation of the ground disappearing from beneath his feet, of the ringing drowning out everyone's voices, of the overwhelming paralysis of both mind and body.

It was only Sherlock's voice that finally brought him back to earth.

"John, this is Detective Inspector Lestrade and Sergeant Sally Donovan. Dr. John Watson, my assistant." The two officers nodded at him in greeting. Did Sherlock realize who they were? Had he even paid that much attention to the news about the Hickman?

"Since when do you have an assistant?" the woman asked, a smirk on her face.

"Irrelevant. Besides, you need all the help you can get, from what Lestrade tells me." The DI gave a slow nod and a tense smile, _unfortunately_.

"Normally, I wouldn't bother you with this," he said as he walked Sherlock and John over to the body. "But honest to God, we just don't have the time to devote to it. We're way too busy."

"With what?" Sherlock asked, his voice laced with disbelief. He walked to the opposite side of the body, throwing a glance at John. When his brow furrowed ever so slightly, John did what he could to correct his own expression, terrified of giving himself away.

"Seriously?" Donovan looked between Sherlock and Lestrade. "You don't know what we've been working on?"

"Why would I?" The woman just rolled her eyes. "Well? What is monopolizing your mental faculties?"

"The Hickman," Lestrade said.

"Funny you should be working on that –" Sherlock stopped when he caught the panic on John's face. The two officers didn't notice the brief warning alarms that seemed to be going off between them. John wanted to cut him off, wanted to interrupt or wave his arms, commanding him to shut the hell up, but there was no way to do that without attracting attention. Thankfully, the twist of terror on his face and the slight shaking beginning in his hand was enough for Sherlock's perceptive eyes, and he stopped himself.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's one of the most important cases in recent history, and yet they gave it to you all. They really should just hand it over to the higher-ups. It would save you the trouble and likely get it solved quicker." John heard Lestrade sigh in frustration, a reaction he believed Lestrade was well used to having to Sherlock's remarks. And while his comment was rather harsh, it successfully stopped any unfortunate line of inquiry that could have arisen.

John hardly remembered any of what they saw at the crime scene. Instead he stood by on the brink of panic, speaking only when asked a direct question, trying to resist the urge to run. It was irrational to worry, since they had no idea who he was, but something primal inside him still worried all the same, filling his head with ridiculous visions of arrests and interrogations.

But the painting was safely tucked away in Baker Street. No one could have known about it except John. And these two officers clearly didn't known him.

God forbid they ever find out he had been present that night. Hiding this fact was more an admission of guilt than a direct lie would have been. If they ever found out he had been at the Hickman, they would start asking questions. And then not even Sherlock Holmes would be able to stop them.

After what felt like hours, the two of them were finally cleared to leave. Sherlock had given them a key piece of evidence, something that they likely would never have noticed, something that they had already overlooked by that point. John tried to be happy, to be proud that Sherlock spent part of his time helping solve serious crimes with the police, but what would have ordinarily been a happy occasion – solving any case was always cause for celebration – was overshadowed by the threat to John's anonymity.

Sherlock insisted they stop for dinner at a restaurant near Baker Street. They usually ate after a case, or rather, John ate while Sherlock talked. Sherlock always managed to make sure John took care of himself, got enough food and sleep, but he was always content to run his own body into the ground.

Sitting in their usual booth in the back of the restaurant, Sherlock watched him with curiosity as he had when they'd first met. And while usually Sherlock knew what John was thinking, this time it was John who could read Sherlock's mind. He just waited for the inevitable question.

Halfway through dinner, it came.

"Why did you not want me to mention to Lestrade that you'd been at the Hickman?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw the look on your face. You looked like someone was holding a gun to your head."

"It's nothing."

"Wrong."

"Look," he said, setting his silverware down, "can you please just, not mention to anyone that I was there that night?"

"If you tell me _why_."

John paused, trying to come up with a satisfactory answer. He settled on a half-truth.

"Because I left the scene. You know how the police have interviewed everyone who was there and survived? Trying to piece things together? I left. I got out through a back door when they were busy defusing the second bomb. And I couldn't imagine sitting down to talk to the police about the explosion. I didn't want anything to do with it. None of them know I was even there. And I'd like it to stay that way. I just don't want to be dragged back into all of that, Sherlock. It was bad enough the first time. I'd really like to avoid reliving it for the sake of a police report."

John waited for a reply, anything, but after a long silence he resumed eating, already planning what he would have to do to avoid the police.

"All right."

He stopped, fork halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"I won't say anything."

"Really?"

"Do you believe you have any relevant information that would help lead them to the bomber?"

"No."

"Then there isn't really any sense in me telling them, is there? If I told them, all that would do is make them take up your time, and since you work with me, that would be most inconvenient in the grand scheme of things. Imagine, you always getting called away for questioning and picking people out of lineups when we're trying to work."

Of course there was a logical reason behind his choice. Wasn't there always? Even if it was self-serving, Sherlock Holmes always had a reason.

He wasn't even sure that Sherlock believed that there wasn't more to his story. Surely he had suspicions. But for whatever reason, he had decided that nothing in John's past was interesting enough to interfere with the present. And for that alone, he was grateful.

Every few hours for the rest of the day, John would be struck with the same realization: he was at the mercy of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock could decide at any point to mention John's presence at the Hickman to Lestrade. There was nothing keeping him from doing so. But by the time he went to bed that night, he had decided to trust Sherlock. It may prove to be a dangerous decision, and John was certainly out of practice where trusting others was concerned, but something made him genuinely believe that Sherlock would never do anything to hurt him, even if the only reason was because he felt it illogical.

... ... ...

Shortly after the incident with Lestrade, John determined he would attempt to live a bit of a normal life. He would still work cases with Sherlock, of course, but he thought it would do him good to do at least a little part time work in a clinic, just to stay in practice. Sherlock seemed less than thrilled with the idea, but then, Sherlock seemed less than thrilled with most things that regular people did.

It was easy enough to get a little bit of work at a nearby clinic, and some small part of John was looking forward to the familiar mundane work. Tagging along with one of London's superheroes was tiring sometimes.

It wasn't until nearly lunchtime that John saw the woman down the hall, standing outside one of the patient rooms with a chart in her hands. She had long brown hair, pulled up into a ponytail, and when she took a few steps down the hall, John noticed that she had the slightest limp. John had met all but a few of the staff members, and even though he _knew_ he hadn't met her, she seemed familiar from somewhere.

When he caught up with her at the end of the hall, planning on introducing himself, she turned to him and said, "Hello." And as soon as she spoke, he recognized her and came to a dead stop.

Her brow furrowed, confused when he didn't say anything back to her. "You're one of the new doctors, yeah?" she asked.

"You're from the Hickman, aren't you?"

Her mouth fell open as she sat the chart down by the computer. "How did you know?"

"I remember you. You were explaining the painting to a man you were with."

"Oh my God." Her eyes scanned his face. "I'm so sorry, you have the advantage, I don't remember seeing you anyplace after the fact, you know, ambulances and police interviews? Most of the people in our room who lived were all sort of kept together when they were triaging us. There weren't many either, just a handful of people from the Vermeer room who survived."

"I wasn't in triage because I wasn't injured. I've been trying to stay away from the whole scene, to tell you the truth."

"You were very lucky, then. Got a set of pins in my leg for a souvenir." She smiled, lovely and sweet as could be. "Sarah Sawyer," she said, shaking his hand.

"John Watson."

"You're that army doctor, aren't you? I heard someone mention you in the break room this morning."

"Guilty as charged."

She sat down on the edge of the desk, her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. "To tell you the truth, it's sort of a relief to find someone else who was at the Hickman. It's kind of difficult, you know, talking to people about it when they weren't there. They don't understand."

"No, they don't," he said, even though he had deliberately avoided talking about it to anyone at all. But she did seem so completely relieved that he couldn't bring himself to not continue talking to her.

"I haven't been able to go back to any of the museums since," she said, laughing a little. "I suppose that's not surprising."

"I haven't really been back either." He didn't add _why_.

"I noticed you're only working part time? Are you easing your way back into the work force? That's what I had to do too, initially."

"Actually, this is sort of a second job. I work with this...detective of sorts, usually."

"A detective?"

"Yeah, sort of a consultant to the police, or private hire."

"How on earth did you end up working with a detective?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

... ... ...

Sarah was an island of calm in the clinic, most days. John would have been lying if he said he wasn't enjoying being around someone with common ground. Aside from her, the closest John had to someone who understood war zones was Sherlock, since he always made London feel like a battlefield in its own right.

It became their habit, on the days John was there, for them to have lunch together in the gray little break room. Even if they didn't talk about anything, it was somehow soothing just to know that someone else on earth knew how you felt about something. They were fast friends, and after a few weeks, they even broached the idea of seeing each other outside of work. But what it had come down to, was neither of them believed it would be healthy for the two of them to be in a relationship with each other. While John normally would have been crestfallen to miss an opportunity with a woman as sweet and intelligent as Sarah, he had to agree with her on that front, thinking in the back of his mind how easy it would be for one of them to accidentally negatively impact the other, since they would live under the shared storm cloud of their matching traumas. It was one thing to be friends, to have a common ground. That was almost therapeutic. But for two people who both believed that they were on some level broken, irreparably damaged, it only seemed dangerous to become codependent.

It was the one topic they would actively avoid bringing up in conversation.

... ... ...

There was one day where John beat Sherlock home. Usually Sherlock had to be dragged from the house, but now and then he would spend a day in the labs working and would be out till all hours of the night. John figured tonight was one such night, and it was just as well. The day had been as terrible as a day in a clinic could be. One patient had to be taken to the hospital after going into a dangerous heart rhythm. There were hoards of screaming children, it had seemed, letting out piercing yells every few minutes. The patients in general were all in terrible moods and a great many of them decided to challenge both John and Sarah's medical opinions, as if they knew the first thing about pharmaceuticals. It had been so miserable that John and Sarah weren't even capable of speech during lunch, and both of them audibly sighed in relief when they were done for the day.

So when John came home to Baker Street, he was thrilled to find the flat empty.

Normally, he would avoid drinking after work, given his sister's history, but there were some days that were so long and so awful that any sane person would reach for a bottle.

He was about halfway through his drink, the world already dark outside the windows, when he heard the familiar footsteps on the stairs, and he cursed to himself that his peace was so soon shattered.

Sherlock burst through the door as he always did, never considering that someone might want things quieter. John watched in silence as he went through his usual steps – gloves, scarf, coat – his irritation vanishing almost instantly. As much as he liked the idea of an empty flat, the simple fact of the matter was that Sherlock made everything feel so much more alive.

It took a moment for Sherlock to see him sitting there on the sofa, and he did a double take, confused as to why John wasn't in his usual chair, searching for meaning where there was none.

"Your day was terrible, I take it?"

"No kidding."

"The patients or the plain doctor?"

" _Patients_ ," he said sharply.

"I don't know why you bother with that clinic, John. It's not as if we have any income issues. It can't be _that_ rewarding."

"Either grab a glass or shut up, Sherlock."

He hated that he had snapped as soon as he did it, but the remark had rubbed him the wrong way, mostly because he was right. It really wasn't all that rewarding.

Generally, Sherlock ignored any sort of command, so John expected him to continue talking while pacing around the room like he usually did, but instead he stepped into the kitchen and emerged with a second glass, pouring himself a drink before sitting on the opposite end of the sofa. He never really sat on furniture. Instead he perched like some winged mythical creature. And so from his corner he watched John curiously and patiently, expecting him to continue.

"There's nothing to say. It was just an awful day. Regular working people have those, sometimes," he said, when Sherlock continued to sit in silence.

"I just don't see the sense in you carrying on with that clinic work. You never seem very fulfilled by it."

John opened his mouth to disagree, but finally just sighed and said, "I'm not."

"Then quit."

"Don't you think it's odd?" He refilled his glass. "Two random people having a joint income, like we essentially do?"

"No."

"Of course you don't." The bottle made a loud clanking noise as John set it down carelessly on the coffee table.

"We function like a small business. Quite successfully, in fact."

John shook his head, laughing a little under his breath. Sherlock thought it sounded perfectly reasonable, naturally. John couldn't imagine what kind of upbringing or education could result in someone who thought that their setup was perfectly normal while also believing there was no sense in a doctor keeping up his skills.

"What?"

"Nothing," John said, taking a drink.

"It's never nothing."

"Well, now and then it hits me how little I know about you. I mean, I know you, but I don't know hardly anything _about_ you. And I was trying to come up with some sort of background that would explain why you are the way you are."

"And what is _the way I am_?"

"I don't know. Different. Not a bad different, but different."

"I had an unusual upbringing."

"Yeah, I bet." Sherlock gestured for the bottle, and John passed it over to him, watching as he poured the whiskey.

"My mother studied mathematics, of course, and she taught it wherever we went. My father worked in foreign embassies, so we traveled a great deal. We never stayed in one place for more than a year, generally. I'm convinced that this upbringing is what initially led Mycroft to seek employment in the government."

"And oh, thank god for that." Sherlock smiled. "Didn't that get tiring, though? Moving around all the time? I figure it was pretty interesting, but didn't it get old?"

"Sometimes. But it didn't matter. I never quite fit in, no matter where we would go, so it was no great pain for me to leave place after place. It's not like I was leaving any friends behind." The comment stung John even though Sherlock said it as if it were a painless memory. "I don't think Mycroft minded either. He had a superiority complex no matter where we were."

"Did you at least get to see some things? I can't really think of another plus of living like that, without a home base."

"Some things we saw were beautiful. Gorgeous art and feats of architecture. Ancient ruins right next to modern metropolises. I was especially fond of the time we spent in Italy and Greece, for the sheer beauty of it. And anyplace that was near open water."

"Open water?"

"Apparently I had a pirate fixation as a child."

John laughed at the way Sherlock said it, as if it was a bit if a regrettable childhood folly. "And to think, I felt wild when my family would take a holiday to a different section of England."

"You've seen things now though, and traveled, via the military."

"Yes. But I'd rather see ancient ruins than some of the things the military allowed me to see."

"Of course. But we're all just sums of our experiences."

"Then what experience led to you becoming a detective?"

Sherlock's eyes were a little glassy. He'd drunk too much too quickly, and John wondered if he'd ever really drunk at all. "This and that. Mostly it was a good way to put my skills to use without getting in trouble for doing so. It's easy to be angry with a bratty child, but much less so when the child exposes theft or infidelity or even murder."

John couldn't begin to imagine what set of experiences would be required, what extraordinary pieces of fate would have to fit together to create a man like Sherlock Holmes. He considered saying as much, but the thought sounded like something Sherlock would be quite disdainful of.

"In its way, the life was fun," Sherlock said. "More so the younger we were. But you're right. It does get...tiring." Sherlock stared off into space, distracted, his face smooth as marble. After a moment, he shook his head and downed the rest of his drink.

"Do your parents still travel a lot?"

"No, they've retired."

"Do you ever wish you'd lived a more, I don't know, settled life growing up?"

"Sometimes. More now, than when I was a child. The idea of spending youth in one place seemed more appealing in retrospect than it did at the time." Sherlock set the empty glass down on the table and turned to look at John, his eyes narrowing in thought. "Things are better now, I believe."

"Better?"

"There is a certain merit to not starting life over again and again. This is the closest my life has ever been to something stable. No more temporary living spaces in other countries, now. I have a home."

"Is that how you felt when you were finally living on your own, when you were younger?"

"No."

"Surely you had more than a temporary living space during your adult life in England."

"Yes, to a certain extent. But a home? That's a more recent development. Baker Street is home." He almost continued, almost said something more, but he stopped himself, leaving John wondering what the hell else he could have added on to an already telling statement. Finally, he said, "The lack of friends, which I also grew up with, that changing has been a recent development as well. We never had many connections like that growing up. No Mrs. Hudsons. No Lestrades." He paused. "Certainly no John Watsons."

His name sounded so soft in Sherlock's voice. It was a simple name, common and unobtrusive, but Sherlock made it sound miraculous. But didn't he always have that effect? Didn't he always somehow manage to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary? All it took was Sherlock Holmes to make the black and white become technicolor.

"Well," John said, scoffing, "I don't know that that last one is really that important in the grand scheme of things. But I suppose it's nice to have a home." When had his own glass become empty?

"Don't sell yourself short." The candor in his voice startled John. He said nothing else, and John wanted to tell him that emptiness being filled by mediocrity wasn't any more substantial than the emptiness itself, but he was sure Sherlock would see that as a challenge and would argue with him, so he held his tongue.

 _God, you're beautiful, you're brilliant, why on earth do you want anything to do with me?_

"All right, fine, whatever you say," John said, brushing it all off as best as he could. But the thoughts wouldn't go away, the creeping thoughts that were saying that whatever _this_ was, it went beyond mere aesthetic and intellectual appreciation. He didn't know why he was surprised he'd been drawn into Sherlock's orbit like so many others. Sherlock was radiant; it was only natural to be drawn to that light. But he couldn't do a thing about it now. He stood from the sofa, murmuring something about being exhausted and needing to sleep.

"I mean it, you know." John made himself stop look at him, instead of walking away. Sherlock waved a hand over the room. "All this? Baker Street and running around solving crimes? Impossible without the John Watson factor."

"Not impossible. You'd manage."

Sherlock smiled, a little laugh. "I think it's well known that the only reason this building hasn't burned to the ground, the only reason the money is handled properly, the only reason that the kitchen isn't a toxic wasteland, is you. You keep this fortress from falling apart."

"You could always hire someone to handle those things if you didn't have me around."

"Possibly. But you keep me from falling apart as well. And I can't hire someone capable of doing that."

John filed away a bit of information: Sherlock Holmes is a sentimental drunk. And yet, it didn't entirely ring true. Sherlock may have been drinking, but his eyes had become clear, and his face looked as it always did. He likely wasn't completely drunk. But the softly spoken words only made John put up his mental defenses. He cursed himself for being just as emotionally useless as his sister.

But that was okay for now. Sherlock would understand. He always did. He always could read John better than anyone else.

But why was it the biggest goddamn trial, just being honest with one another?

"Thank you for that, John. Really."

He couldn't say it, couldn't get out the truth of it. _You keep me from falling apart too, and you're the only thing on earth that can make terrible things get out of my head. This is home to me. You are home._

The silence hung in the air for a moment before John answered simply, "You're welcome, Sherlock."

... ... ...

His room felt empty, not alive as their living room had.

Most of what Sherlock had said could be taken entirely platonically, of course. It was only John's brain thinking too much about it. After all, Sherlock had never been one to mince words. He only said exactly what he meant. And what person wouldn't want something like a home, some semblance of safety, friends? It was probably all very rational in Sherlock's mind.

But then again, even taking it platonically, it was still quite a statement. What did it mean, when someone considered you essential to their life? What did it mean when they equated you with home? For so long, John realized, he had lived solely in his own head, living an interior life. The rest of the world he'd let continue on around him, showing little interest in it. It was strange to think that he made an impact in anyone's life, so wrapped up in his own world had he been. He never once considered that, while Sherlock had shown up at the right moment and changed his world, that he may have had a similar effect, however small, on Sherlock.

 _You probably love him, and that is a goddamn problem._

He repeated to himself over and over that Sherlock was a sentimental drinker and meant it all platonically and that he was crazy to think otherwise. It took this chorus to even slightly drown out that single destructive thought. Whatever he felt for Sherlock Holmes, he certainly wasn't capable of dealing with it now, feeling the nervous edge rise up inside him as he stared at his bedroom ceiling.

But he took comfort in the fact that his earlier assumption had essentially been confirmed, that he was safe at the mercy of Sherlock Holmes. And while he'd assumed then that Sherlock would keep his secrets due to logic, the night had made it painfully clear that there was more to it than that.

Sherlock would never do anything to jeopardize the only home he'd ever had.


	4. All the Names of Our Dark Heaven

**All the Names of Our Dark Heaven**

" _Names of poisons, names of/handguns, names of places  
we've been/together, names of people we'd be together,/Names  
of endurance, names of devotion,/street names and place names  
and all the names of our dark heaven."_

John was beginning to live outside the shadow of Afghanistan and the Hickman. He would catch himself sometimes, realizing he had made it through entire days without thinking about either of them. He felt a strange sense of peace when he would be able to look for something in his closet without feeling weighted down for the rest of the day by the knowledge of what was still tucked away in the back of it.

The first time that it truly occurred to him, that he was actually living as opposed to just existing, he was elated, and the world suddenly seemed sharper and more real. He had walked around in an anesthetic haze for so long, and finally felt like he was awake again. And while he had been improving for quite a while, it's one thing to get better, and another thing entirely to consciously realize that fact.

Of course, there were still days made up of darkness and fear, days where he couldn't sleep because the painting would haunt him, but they grew fewer with each passing week. Besides, even people who had been through nothing but the trials of an average human life had dark days where all their demons caught up with them.

He felt indebted to Sherlock, plain and simple. Because at the very least, Sherlock's whirlwind life was enough to keep him distracted from those dark places. John couldn't imagine where he'd be if fate hadn't intervened and brought the two of them together. Would he still be at his sad and empty little rooms? Would he have given in and gotten a full time job at a hospital? Would he even still be alive?

Naturally, he said nothing about this to Sherlock. Despite his sentiment while drinking, Sherlock was still mostly indifferent to the sentiment of others, and John didn't even want to try and imagine what his reaction would be to John's honesty. How does anyone react when told by their friends that they've saved a life? So while he let himself be pulled into Sherlock's orbit indefinitely, he kept quiet. But more than once, he caught himself looking at Sherlock like he was the sun itself.

... ... ...

It was a cold, clear night in London, and the two of them were out walking through the city. Mycroft had called earlier in the day, wanting Sherlock to come meet him to discuss a case, so naturally, Sherlock had put it off for as long as he could, and walked right past Mycroft's hired car to kill some more time. Mycroft had texted him, annoyed that he was so obviously indifferent to the case. Sherlock knew what the case was about, but he hadn't mentioned it to John, which wasn't unusual, since he had a great habit of dragging John off with him and explaining why after the fact. Whatever it was probably didn't involve multiple homicides, since he seemed to want nothing to do with it. John tried to narrow down possibilities in his head – fraud, protecting someone from the upper class, government issues, international crime.

When he looked up to say something to Sherlock, he found him staring up at the sky as he walked, seemingly oblivious to John's presence. John followed his gaze up, looking at the few stars that were bright enough to shine through the city lights. Had they been in a brighter section of London, they might not have been visible at all, and surely they were seeing diminished levels of the stars' true brightness, but they were lovely. They pushed through the blackness of the galaxies and the harsh whites and yellows of the city to shine on them.

Sherlock finally noticed John watching him and, without taking his eyes off the stars, said, "Beautiful, isn't it?"

 _Nothing compared to you_.

"Yeah. But I thought you didn't care about things like that."

"Doesn't mean I can't appreciate it."

"Sure."

Sherlock glanced at him, just for a moment, before slowing his pace and staring back at the sky. "Try as they might, artists can never really capture the cosmos in a way that does it any justice. The universe can't be captured with paint."

John laughed. "What do _you_ know about art?"

"Well, I know _Starry Night_ by Van Gogh. We used to have prints of his paintings in one of the houses we lived in. And wasn't that Vermeer that Lestrade is so preoccupied with of a starry sky?"

The world fell out from under him, but he forced himself to keep walking, grateful that Sherlock had slowed down. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground in front of him. "It's a city at night, I think." When he finally mustered the nerve to look back at Sherlock, he realized that he probably hadn't ever taken his eyes off the sky.

Sherlock shrugged. "Whatever. Painters can't capture the stars. Stars are science, not art."

"Oh, I don't know. What about poets? Poets write about them all the time. Poetry's a kind of art, isn't?"

"Perhaps. I would be more inclined to say that poets understand the stars far more than artists. Artists are only recording what they see, but poets are recording the _meaning_ of what they see. It's all well and good to make a record of something's appearance, but a poet will ask the point of it." There was something soothing in the way he talked, the way he said each word like he'd already planned this speech out before. It quieted the ringing in John's ears, the horrible knee jerk reaction to the Vermeer. It even crossed a bit into the endearing, that someone who loved logic and science so much still couldn't manage to not wax poetic about the stars. "But it doesn't really matter, does it? It's all just space and physics, anyway."

"Not entirely. There's more to it than that."

They came to a stop on the pavement. Sherlock watched him curiously, his face cut by the lamplight, his eyes briefly running over John's face, his own expression almost sad.

"No, you're right. Much more."

... ... ...

Mycroft's office at the Diogenes Club felt wrong. It held a false sense of coziness, the color palettes warm and earthy, the furniture old and elegant, the fire in the hearth welcoming in its lie. Because Mycroft himself made the room a lie by his own presence, the clinical coldness fit incorrectly into the room like a ring too small for a finger. And Sherlock, with his dark coat and pale skin, looked just as otherworldly, a ghost haunting the living, summoned in a séance.

The desk was covered in papers, information spilling out of manila folders across the wood, covering up the faintest nicks and scratches that revealed its age. Even though it felt late, John could hear the sound of other people moving in the building, a door catching as it shut, footsteps in the halls, distant, muffled voices in another room.

For a while he felt frozen in a distant forgotten era, watching numbly as Sherlock picked up some of the pages in his uncovered hands, shuffling them with delicacy as Mycroft spoke, the familiar words exploding in John's brain like gunshots. _Hickman. Art theft. International importance. Terrorism. Targeted bombings._

"When did you get assigned to this case, Sherlock?" The two brothers stopped and stared at him, pausing at his interruption. Mycroft then shot Sherlock a condescending sort of look. John was so totally out of his element. The Holmes brothers, for all their clashing with the room itself, were still more suited to this place than he was. Why couldn't they have done this, of all things, at Baker Street where he would be safe?

"I've been trying to help for a while now. Lestrade has handed much of the Hickman case over to Mycroft, and by extension, me. Because it wasn't as if the Met was actually getting anywhere with it."

The logic did nothing to temper the shock. "Yeah, thanks for letting me know."

Sherlock let out a little huff of a sigh. The Holmes equivalent of an eye roll. "Well it didn't seem worth discussing until there was actually something we could do. Art museum bombings aren't nearly as interesting as you would think. Since now it looks as if we'll actually be able to do something for this hopeless case, now you know. I didn't see any reason to mention it till now."

John hated that he couldn't argue with him. Because it was true that if Sherlock had brought it up sooner, he would have spent every waking minute of his day thinking about it instead of focusing on their current cases. He almost hated how well Sherlock knew him. In a white flag of defeat, John crossed his arms over his chest and begrudgingly walked to the desk to join the conversation. Mycroft waited until he was convinced that John would listen before he spoke.

"John, I believe you are one of the few who was unaware that we were involved with this case," he said, handing John one of the folders, "given how many unsavory characters have moved in around you two lately. Opportunists, assassins, very questionable individuals."

"Great." John flipped through the folder. The faces inside meant nothing to him. Had he accidentally turned blinders on to any part of his world that wasn't Sherlock and Baker Street and the goddamn London stars?

"There have been other art galleries receiving anonymous threats, and we have cause to believe that it is our original Hickman bomber, rather than a copycat. It's becoming problematic. One can only sustain high level security details for so long at so many different museums."

"But why is he doing it? What does he want? I mean, if he wants to wreak havoc, why not just bomb anyplace he wants without warning? Why play with everyone instead?"

"That, Dr. Watson, is the question of the hour. Motive aside, we don't believe that the Hickman was an isolated incident. Rather, think of it as a symptom of a much larger disease. I personally believe that it is more an issue of theft and targeting of specific masterworks, rather than any political motivation."

"Why?"

"Because forensics doubts that the Vermeer was destroyed. They believe it was stolen in the fray." John's throat tightened, and he couldn't bring himself to look at Sherlock, a dark blur in his peripheral vision. If he did he would collapse. He would never be able to look at him now and keep quiet. "When factoring in that the other galleries who have been targeted have also recently acquired priceless pieces in their exhibitions, it stands to reason that the bomber is strategically targeting them for the pieces themselves."

There was a silence over the room, held just a little longer than John would have liked. "But what good would having them do him?" he asked, feeling the rationalization bubble up in his throat without warning. "It's not like he can sell any of them without the whole world knowing about it. Even in criminal circles I imagine there would be people who'd be willing to make a deal and then go to the police so the bomber gets caught and they get reward money for helping save priceless works of art. So why is the bomber bothering? There have to be easier ways to make money if you're a criminal mastermind." Mycroft gave a raise of his eyebrows, conceding.

"Perhaps he's just an art enthusiast," Sherlock said, the glib edge to his voice drawing disapproving looks from both John and Mycroft.

"Jesus, Sherlock," John said, dropping the folder onto the desktop.

Mycroft looked back at him. "He has a point. People have been murdered for twenty pounds. People have been murdered for fun. It's not that great a stretch of imagination to think that a megalomaniac is bombing art galleries and stealing his favorite pieces. I've heard stranger things."

"But how could he guarantee the bomb wouldn't destroy the piece he was after?" Sherlock asked.

John nodded. "It's chance."

Sherlock frowned, growing frustrated with the whole affair. "Maybe the priceless works of art are just a potential bonus, and the real motivation is the chaos and death. Maybe the bombings and art thefts aren't related. Maybe pieces get stolen because people are opportunistic even in a crisis. Maybe the bomber is just a madman."

"Even a madman has _something_ that he wants," John said, hating how desperate his voice sounded. "People are getting killed, their lives are being ruined. So what does the madman want?"

"Or _who_?" Mycroft added. John hated the single word, hated the implications of it, that all this suffering was someone's sick cat and mouse game.

Sherlock picked up one of the photos, one taken by another opportunist the night of the Hickman explosion. It showed the crowds all gathered outside the police tape, people straining to get better looks at the carnage. The faces meant nothing to John, aside from the bystander, looking just as sickly gleeful about the whole nightmare as all the other lookers on. Sherlock scrutinized the photo, hunting for motive in a sea of strangers' faces.

"Yes. Or who?"

... ... ...

"You should have told me," John said from the other side of the cab as they turned onto Baker Street. The cabbie glance at them in the rear view mirror, and John knew what he was thinking – _couple's spat_ – but he was far too tired to care about his assumptions. "About them calling you and Mycroft in on the Hickman case."

Sherlock only said, "There was no sense in telling you till it became an actual issue. It would have only had you walking around upset. You know that."

"You should have told me."

The cabbie's eyes, which was all John could really see of him in the mirror, were filled with pity. On another day he might have said something about how it's not what you think, but he had the ill-timed realization that in a way, it was exactly what he thought. But that was something to worry about on a different day.

Once they were in Baker Street, away from the watchful eyes of the rest of the world, John turned around in their living room, watching Sherlock as he walked through the doorway, pulling his gloves off.

"This bomber is playing with innocent people's lives, Sherlock."

"I know."

"When people have _died_ and been ruined and broken and will never recover from what he's done, and he wants to keep doing it. He doesn't care what the consequences are. We don't even know what he wants or if he wants anything at all, but we know that he doesn't care who he hurts along the way. There were _children_ in the Hickman that night, Sherlock! Who are his next victims going to be? A class on a school trip? A family? The elderly and the pregnant and the vulnerable? Why hasn't anyone handled this, why are we even having this problem? Why does everyone keep acting like this _maniac_ is going to do this again, _instead of trying to prevent him from doing it_!" He had reached hysteria without meaning to, his words blending together as he spoke faster. Sherlock only stood across the room from him for the longest time, but when his ranting became broken and nearly incomprehensible, he stepped forward and grabbed John by his shoulders.

"Listen to me."

There was something soft about the command that made John fall silent. He had answered thousands of commands from Sherlock Holmes, little things like _pass me my phone_ and bigger things like shouted warnings to duck from a murderer's bullet. But those commands had always been uttered with the great understood that John would obey them. This was something different. This was unsure, and this had absolutely nothing to do with the case. Commands were always related to the cases or the mundane. He didn't know _what_ this was.

"What this bomber is doing, it isn't personal, John. He is doing it for fortune and glory, or maybe even for fun. But don't let your own experiences cloud your judgment. That will not help you stop him. I know you were at the Hickman. I know how much pain it caused you. But keep a clear head. You'll need it in the coming months." He let his hands drop, looking a bit surprised to see that they had been on John's shoulders. He took a step back out of John's personal space. "We will stop him, John. I can promise you that. Whatever it takes, I will make sure he is stopped."

And Sherlock sounded so sure in his declaration that John almost believed it was true.

... ... ...

Sholto looked tired, but then again, didn't he always?

It was a bring the mountain to Muhammad situation, seeing Sholto. Ever since he'd come home from Afghanistan and turned into a recluse, it became increasingly difficult to even get him to walk outside in his own yard. He had hired people for anything that he needed and otherwise saw no one aside from John. But then again, John was essentially the only person left on earth who would willingly speak to him.

Sherlock was out of town for the weekend, dragged off by Mycroft, and his absence had been so glaring that John had to leave Baker Street to fill it. He didn't especially enjoy this feeling, but he took it as an opportunity to see one of the only other people who had ever made any kind of significant impact on his life.

He'd made a habit of checking in on Sholto, part of him worried that one day one of his hired hands would come inside and find him dead, hanging from a makeshift noose or clutching an empty pill bottle. John wouldn't even blame him, really. He'd had thoughts like those. But given what had happened in Afghanistan, John thought the least he could do was try and lift the isolation, even if only a little bit. And his life had been so hectic lately due to Sherlock that he'd fallen behind in his visits, and he hated himself for it. The worst thought was that a miserable and lonely man felt abandoned by one of the only people who spoke to him anymore.

They would always sit in the living room, a place that felt formal and in a constant state of expectation, waiting for guests who would never come. There would always be coffee or tea, something to eat, and if it was a good day, John could even coax a laugh or smile or two from him. There had been a few times where Sholto was in bad enough shape that he had barely been able to speak, the paralyzed arm held close to his chest like a badge of shame. John thought that others might find it a difficult environment to be in without feeling inexorably sad, but instead he took a sort of comfort in both his and Sholto's sadness. It was relaxing, not having to pretend to be okay. The only other person who had ever allowed him that luxury was Sherlock.

John had also tried in the past to get Sholto to get professional help, a therapist or something, but even as he had said it, he heard the unspoken, _And how much good has professional help done you, John?_

"Where's Lila?" John asked from his usual chair, country sun cutting through the windows. "The woman who was cooking?"

"She found out about Afghanistan, about what happened and who I am. I've had to hire some new people lately because of it. They always find out in the end. Lila called me a monster and quit." He shrugged one shoulder, the one that felt no creeping paralysis. "I'm trying to hire fewer people. I'd like to do away with it entirely, but that's not really plausible." John thought it was a massive understatement. Absolutely not plausible for an agoraphobic, disabled, traumatized army veteran. He hated that hiring staff who didn't despise him was even something he had to worry about. Sholto had internalized and normalized his own self-loathing.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

He smiled sadly. "Not really, Watson. But I appreciate the sentiment. Honestly, you help a great deal just by speaking to me."

Sholto's house was large for one person, and remote, and the emptiness was palpable. John wished Sholto had a wife, a family, something, _someone_. Because he was so alone, and so obviously had no idea how to truly cope with it. No human being really knows how to cope with being completely alone in the world, day after day, with no one happy to see you in the evening, no one to share morning coffee with, no one to sleep next to at night. Even John had felt that emptiness before, and the very thought of enduring it for decades the way that Sholto was sure to do sounded like the very definition of hell.

"I'm sorry I haven't been around as much lately."

Sholto shook his head. "Trust me, it's fine."

"No, it isn't. I want you to know I won't turn on you."

"I know you won't, Watson. You've certainly had plenty of opportunities."

John smiled a little. "I've just been in a sort of chaos the last few months."

Sholto sat forward some in his seat, catching the opportunity to direct the conversation away from himself. "Yeah? Still going to all your art openings?" He grinned. John's artistic inclinations since returning from Afghanistan had always amused Sholto.

"Hah. Well, no, not lately, actually."

Sholto's brow furrowed, instant, almost paternal concern. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've just been busy with clinic work and cases."

"Cases?"

"Oh. Yeah, I work with this sort of freelance detective. Sherlock Holmes. We're usually on at least one case, murders and things like that."

"I think I've heard that name before, you know, but always in passing in the newspaper."

"Yeah, he doesn't really like being in the news spotlight, really."

"How on earth did you even meet such a person?"

John opened his mouth to speak and stopped himself. The more people who knew about the Hickman, the greater the risk. But Sholto looked so thrilled to hear a good story, and was so intrigued that John slowly and quietly told him how he'd been at the Hickman and how the stranger's ring had led him to Sherlock Holmes. He left out the bit about the Vermeer of course. That would have been far too great a risk. The only reason he felt relatively safe telling Sholto about the Hickman at all was because of the very low likelihood that anyone would talk to Sholto long enough for him to reveal this secret.

"Please don't repeat that story to anyone."

"Who would I tell? And my god, Watson! I can't believe you were caught up in all that! I didn't see your name in any of the papers?"

"I stayed out of the limelight." Sholto of all people would understand the desire to disappear.

"Much like your detective friend."

"In some ways, yes."

"So you've been busy. Are you still in your same rooms? Those rooms always felt so temporary. I hope in all this excitement you've found someplace more permanent."

"No, I'm not in those rooms any more. I live in Baker Street."

"That's prime real estate. Must have cost a small fortune."

"Well, I split the rent with Sherlock."

Sholto tilted his head back just a few inches, but those few inches spoke volumes. "Oh, all right, that makes sense."

"No, no," John held one finger up. "No, I just live with him. We're flatmates. That's it."

"All right."

John let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his hands over his eyes. "You don't believe me."

"No, if you say that's the case, I'll believe you. I'm just curious. It's an odd setup."

"Don't I know it."

"But just flatmates?"

"Yeah. Besides. I don't think he even feels things that way."

"What way?"

"You know." He gave a little wave of his hand. "He's one of those people who thinks emotions are a waste of time. So I don't think he feels things that way." He tried to shrug, to brush it all off, and from the look on Sholto's face, he knew he had failed miserably. John waited, expecting a joke or a quick retort, an old-fashioned army jab, but Sholto just watched him quietly, slowly nodding his head. He wasn't even looking at John when he finally decided to speak.

"And what if he did? What if he was capable of feeling things that way?"

John hadn't known until that point that it was possible to be cornered when in the middle of a room.

"Just because I'm a recluse doesn't mean I've lost my ability to read between the lines. I could always read you like a book, John." The rare and casual use of his first name, something that Sholto only did when making it clear how serious he was about something, made John painfully aware of just how obvious it must seem to everyone. Except perhaps Sherlock.

"Yeah, well, it's sort of a moot point, anyway."

"Why is that?"

"Because that _if_? It's a big _if_. And I have no idea what to do about it. But it's not important. Just having the cases, the work, the distraction. It's worth it. If you knew him, you'd know what I mean. There are some people where even breathing the same air as them makes it worth it. Some people are so _alive_ , James. Neither of us are used to that. It's strange, being around someone who is living life with so much enthusiasm. But it's nice."

"And that's enough for you?"

"Yes. For now, anyway. Afghanistan made me less likely to think long-term, as I'm sure you know."

"I'm glad you're not living alone, even if it is just with a friend. I worried about you, when you first came back. That solitude wasn't good for you."

"I could say the same about you."

"Of course. But remember, Watson. I'm the villain in many people's stories. You're the hero. And heroes should never be alone at the end of the day."

... ... ...

When John returned to Baker Street that evening, haunted by the ease with which his old friend had read him, he found Sherlock already home, stretched out on the sofa and presumably deep in thought. When he got that way, John tended to leave him to it, not breaking his silence or needlessly filling it with chatter. But he was only five minutes into his nightly routine when Sherlock said, "Things may get rather chaotic in the coming weeks."

John turned around to find Sherlock watching him, his hands clasped loosely over his chest.

"So?"

"You're all right with that?"

"Sherlock, after all this time, I'm used to your chaos."

"Hmm."

"What?"

"This may be worse than usual. I wouldn't blame you for staying out of it. In fact it may be a good idea."

"Is this about the Hickman? Sherlock, there is no way in hell I'm staying out of that. I don't think I could if I wanted to."

"I would understand if you wanted to."

"You said we essentially run a business, yeah? I'm not going to abandon my partner because the case could throw life into chaos. I don't do that."

"If you're sure."

"I am. You know that. You know I'll come help with any case. I'm there if you want me to be."

"Good. Because I do."

He didn't say so, but the remark relieved him. There was something to be said for always having at least one person you could count on to want your company, someone happy to see you at the end of the day, to share that morning coffee with.

There was never emptiness in Baker Street.


	5. Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight

**Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight**

" _Say hallelujah, say goodnight, say it over/the canned music  
and your feet won't stumble,/his face getting larger, the rest  
blurring/on every side. And angels, about twelve angels,/angels  
knocking on your head right now, hello/hello, a flash in the sky,  
would you like to/meet him there, in Heaven?"_

John was reaching out to unlock the door when Sherlock emerged and effortlessly turned him back toward the street. "We're going to Bart's."

John stumbled a little on the pavement. "Why?"

"Need to pick up some things before the flight."

"What flight?"

Sherlock opened the cab door, waiting for John to get in. He stood there in silence until John complied.

When the door shut on them, he continued, "We're going to Rome." He said it with that familiar tone of finality. _Don't ask questions, John, it will make sense in time_.

Standing in the lab at Bart's, Sherlock flipped through a very thick forensics file while John sat at another bench, watching him, wondering what the hell was going through his head this time. John had attempted to talk to him more once they reached the hospital, but Sherlock wouldn't be distracted, not even by John.

Sherlock pulled his phone out and placed a call, talking quietly into it, and John sighed, resigning himself to the fact that they would be here a while.

He wondered if Molly could feel the worry radiating off of him from her place at the microscope next to him. She'd continued her work, only occasionally stopping to stare at Sherlock with the same look of self-loathing and longing she always wore when he wasn't looking.

John hated his own worry. After all the cases he'd worked with Sherlock, he'd hoped that the worry would eventually go away. But without fail, no matter what faced them, he always approached it with concern and apprehension until he was satisfied that everything would turn out okay. That Sherlock would continue to defeat evil and cheat death. And he always did. The danger was real, but it was never enough to stop him. He chided himself for his irrational fear, telling himself that this case would turn out them same way. But Sherlock looked so serious, and the nervous way with which he fidgeted with the corners of the papers set John ill at ease.

If he would just fucking tell him what was going on, he could quit agonizing about it. But Sherlock never told anyone anything until he was convinced he knew all the answers.

"You look sad," Molly said. John turned to find her watching him, her hands frozen in midair holding a slide and pipette.

"I'm fine."

"No, I mean you look sad. When you think he can't see you."

John sat back on his stool, straightening his back, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't worry. He can see you. He can. I promise."

He was about to speak when Molly set down her things and stepped away from the bench. John almost wanted to chase her down, to grab her by the wrist and ask her to elaborate, to make some sort of sense out of her own remark. But she was gone too quickly, the door swinging shut behind her.

She stood on the other side, her profile just barely visible in the glass on the door, talking to someone. The man emerged into John's line of slight like a character appearing in the frame of a film. Molly smiled at him warmly, and he came up and kissed her cheek, his dark hair a sharp contrast across her pale face.

And for a split second of a casual glance, the bystander's eyes met his.

He and Molly were gone too quickly to tell, but John almost believed the man recognized him. He could feel his heart pounding, his body paralyzed with fear. It took three tries for Sherlock to get his attention.

When John looked at him, he was standing on the other side of the bench, confused and holding his file tucked under his arm.

"Honestly, John, pay attention."

"Sorry. You ready to leave?"

Sherlock nodded, beckoning him to follow. He said without turning to see if John was behind him, "Let's pack our bags, we're going to Rome. Our flight leaves in two hours."

John had to run to catch up with him, the harsh chemical smell of the hospital hallways almost nauseating.

In the cab on the way home, John asked, "So what are we talking about here? Homicide? Kidnapping?"

"International theft and violence."

"You don't like international crime. You think it's tedious."

"It usually is."

John resisted saying what he wanted to say until they were in the living room in Baker Street, Sherlock throwing random "necessary" things into an open suitcase.

"When are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Sherlock paused and turned to face him. "It's related to the Hickman case." John could feel himself tense. The case had been a welcome distraction, a way of keeping his mind off seeing the bystander at Bart's, but now the two were tied and he wanted to run. "This is why I didn't want to tell you until I had to." John crossed the room, started to speak, and Sherlock cut him off. "I promise it will be all right. We're meeting Mycroft and following up on a threat made to one of the museums there. It's nothing." John didn't even _try_ to speak. He stared at the rug under his feet and took a deep breath. "If you aren't comfortable with pursuing this case, I'll gladly tell Mycroft to go to hell."

When John faced him, when he saw the serious set to his features, all he could do was laugh. "Yeah, I'm sure Mycroft would take 'go to hell' for an answer."

"He would manage."

John smiled, tempered by the gesture. Sherlock lived for his cases. The mere discussion of giving up one so important was beautifully unexpected, and the mental image of that conversation between the Holmes brothers was enough to make him forget everything else for a second. "No, I'll go."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. You're right. It'll be fine. We've dealt with worse."

Sherlock grinned, turning back to his suitcase. "Then go pack. We may be gone for a few weeks, so choose luggage accordingly. Mycroft is arranging rooms for us."

... ... ...

John reached for his usual bag in his closet before deciding that it was too small. He reached for the large suitcase without thinking and didn't even realize what he'd done till he opened it and saw the outline of the painting tucked inside. The Vermeer had been in his thoughts less and less as time passed. He wasn't even sure if people were still investigating the Hickman case aside from the Holmes boys. But suddenly it was the only thing in the world. He couldn't even bring himself to unwrap it from its cloth hiding place, couldn't make himself actually look at the brush strokes and uneven spots in the paint. He still remembered exactly what it looked like, down to the signature and the little cracks along one corner. If he shut his eyes standing there in front of it, he would be able to see it. But still, he reached out a hand to uncover it like a child trying to convince themselves that monsters aren't real by flinging open their closet door. But as his fingers took hold of the edge of the painting's wrappings, he heard Sherlock calling him from downstairs, and after a moment of agonizing hesitation, he flipped the suitcase shut and shoved it back into its dark corner, where it would continue to haunt him at night when he returned home.

... ... ...

The dry sunny heat of Rome was a shock after so many months of the damp English chill.

John had never been to Italy, unlike Sherlock, so he couldn't help but stare out of the car window at everything they passed. Sherlock spent the ride staring at his phone.

The city _felt_ ancient. If not for the cars and people and modern dress John would have expected to look down a street and see directly into a different time. Rome had a history that England didn't, despite its own centuries of wars and kings. Perhaps it was the Mediterranean climate, perhaps the ruins and monuments tucked in between modern buildings, or maybe it was just the dreamlike quality of the situation, the obvious feeling that he was a stranger in a strange land, but Rome felt like an entirely new world. Ancient and divine, dwarfed by domed churches and crumbling pillars, and at the same time, human and mundane, people chatting together at cafe tables and stray cats darting in and out of alleys.

It was such a mythical grand place that it seemed natural for someone like Sherlock to be here.

Their car pulled up in front of an old but well preserved building, an elegant hotel it looked like. The sort of place that stars would vacation at in between blockbuster movies, paparazzi snapping photos of them on the balconies.

Mycroft would have it no other way.

John stepped out of the car, the heat hitting him, making him wonder how people lived in such constant sunlight. In that regard, it almost reminded him of Afghanistan, the warmth and baked feeling in every stone and brick. But Rome wasn't a battleground. Not anymore. Now it was a paradise.

He pulled his suitcase out behind him. Sherlock had already gotten out of the car from the other side and was standing a few feet away on the pavement, hands in his pockets and staring down the street. At the edge of the alley between the hotel and the next building was a stray dog, an Irish setter that had seen better days. Sherlock wouldn't take his eyes off it, caught in a trance, and it took John prompting him to draw him back to the present. He seemed to emerge from a fog, taking a few steps closer to John, his eyes still following the dog until it vanished from view down the alley. Only then did he take his suitcase from John's hand.

Their suite was upstairs, an elegant and lavish place with an enormous sitting room. Everything looked breakable, and it made John almost nostalgic for the simplicity and domesticity of Baker Street. But the suite was beautiful, and the view from their windows and balcony just as enchanting as every other facet of the city had been.

Mycroft was waiting for them, standing beside a glass coffee table with his usual smug expression. He greeted both of them, but only John replied, and even then, tersely. His patience for Mycroft was not lengthy on the best of days, and lately his involvement with the Hickman case had made his patience even shorter. Mycroft treated it as the most important thing on earth when all John wanted to do was close the case and forget about it.

"Has Sherlock briefed you?" he asked, picking up a folder from the table. "No, of course he hasn't." Sherlock ignored him, glancing out the window, distracted. "A threat has been made against one of the museums here, as I'm sure you've realized."

"Yeah, I figured."

"We're merely following up while we gain more information on our suspect."

"Oh, you finally have one of those?" John heard Sherlock chuckle under his breath from across the room. Mycroft held back a glare.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." He opened the folder, pulled out a photograph, and handed it to John. It wasn't the best quality photo, taken with a zoom lens from a fair distance, but the face was unmistakable. "His name is James Moriarty, and he is a decidedly unpleasant character."

The bystander had a name.

He wasn't dressed in his casual clothes, wasn't wearing his Bart's smile, but there were the same brown eyes, the same wiry look, all wrapped up in an elegant suit. He had sunglasses held between his fingers and a look of superiority and disdain on his face. Either the bystander had a doppelganger or was a skilled actor.

Mycroft tried to hand him a second photograph, but John didn't acknowledge him. He just stared at the photo, barely believing that such a thing was possible. But there was no one else it could be.

He could feel sickness rise in his throat. Mycroft said his name, which he ignored, incapable of speech.

"Oh lord, Mycroft, go back to your office. I think I can brief John in a much more interesting and succinct manner. You'll be here all day." John saw Sherlock appear in the edge of his field of vision, striding past him and Mycroft to the door. He heard the click of it opening, sure Sherlock was standing by it still. "Goodbye. Call if you need anything. Although don't expect me to answer."

John looked up from the photo to find the brothers staring each other down, Mycroft finally nodding, ego just a bit bruised. When Sherlock slammed the door shut behind him, he did so with delight.

"What's wrong?" he asked, coming to stand by John, looking over his shoulder at the photo, Mycroft's folder in his hand.

"What makes you think something's wrong?"

"You froze when he handed you this. Why?" Sherlock reached out and slid the photo from John's hand, their fingers brushing. He was standing so much closer than was probably necessary, holding the photo out in front of them where John could still see it if he wanted. But the bystander's face unnerved him, so he took a step away, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

"I know that face, Sherlock."

"Where from?"

"He was out behind the police blockade, watching everything that night at the Hickman, when the police were trying to defuse the second bomb."

"Well, yes, I imagine he was since he's probably behind all of this?"

"What if he remembers seeing me? Because I certainly remember seeing him."

"So what if he does?"

"A criminal mastermind knows my face, Sherlock."

"John, he would likely know who you are even if you _weren't_ at the Hickman that night. We've been in the papers, after all. Can't hide from the press all the time. I'm sure he knows we're looking into this case, too."

"You don't understand."

"No, I don't. I don't like not understanding."

"Don't worry about it." He waved it off, sitting on the sofa. "Tell me about the gallery getting threatened."

"But what about this man knowing who you are?"

"Drop it. Not important."

Sherlock stood in front of him, silent, waiting for John to cave and tell him like he usually did. But how could John explain this terror without explaining the Vermeer? The bystander wasn't just a bystander anymore. He was a criminal mastermind, a terrorist bomber who might know the only secret he had. Well, one of the only _two_ secrets he had. What if they encountered him somewhere, and he was exposed? What would he say? How could he ever explain any of this to a man who had never known the slightest bit of fear?

Sherlock waited, looking almost pained that John remained silent. He finally gave in and spoke.

"The threat is against the Borghese Gallery. The Borghese family was a patron of the sculptor Bernini. You know Bernini?"

"Yeah, I've seen a few of his pieces."

"The gallery has a small number of his sculptures to this day. But others have been sold or transferred to different museums over the years, as things tend to go. And for the first time in a very long time, there will be a special Bernini exhibition at the Borghese. There will be sculptures from galleries all over the world, all in the same place at the same time. This gallery will be filled with important works from one of the most skilled artists in history."

"No wonder it's a target."

"It's culturally priceless."

"I know. And he wants to blow it apart."

"We think."

"I'd say it's a safe bet. How many other mad bombers can be out there doing what he's doing?"

"You think highly of him."

"Not highly. I think he's despicable."

"He's smart, fiendish, and yes, probably despicable. The more information uncovered about Jim Moriarty, the more horrible he becomes. Although one must give him credit for committing such a variety of crimes and never actually getting caught." Sherlock handed him a piece of paper, a list of possible cold cases that were the result of this man's work, going back more than twenty years. The first entry on the list was the murder of Carl Powers.

"Wouldn't this man have been a child when this murder happened, though?"

"A teenager."

"They think a teenager murdered another kid?"

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"How does he not get caught?"

"Extraordinary patience and skill."

"And you said _I_ spoke highly of him."

"Well, where would heroes be without villains?"

"Jesus, Sherlock."

"It's better than having no leads."

"If this is the man behind these bombings, then we've gotten into something bigger than we planned, Sherlock. I mean, Christ, he's been committing murders since he was _a child_. What would he do if he got his hands on us?"

"We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen then, won't we?"

... ... ...

They walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and by the time they were headed back to the hotel, the sun was dipping low in the sky, casting everything in an amber twilight glow. Rome was best experienced by foot, John decided. There was something soothing about being able to feel the stones under his feet, being able to hear the echo of conversation bouncing off buildings in the narrow street. Soon the lights would come on, the city thrown into nighttime, with just as few stars visible as in London. But this sunset time, this earthy radiance, was the heart of Rome anyway. A city of sunlight and beauty.

There were tourists wandering around just like them, most of them bubbly and laughing, completely unburdened by the things that seemed to follow John and Sherlock wherever they went. But even Sherlock seemed oddly at ease here, tolerating John's slow pace, enduring his enchantment with a city that he had probably seen a hundred times, mostly in silence.

At one point, they crossed through a piazza, and John laughed before he could stop himself, at the strange statue of an elephant with an obelisk rising up out of his back.

"That's a little odd, isn't it?" John said.

"It's Bernini."

"Wait, seriously?"

"Yes. It's been there for hundreds of years."

"One of the greatest artists of all time and he designed an elephant."

Sherlock smiled a little. "I'd recommend going inside if you want to see more...traditional Bernini works." He nodded toward the face of a tall white building. John walked off toward it without seeing if Sherlock would follow. It had become a guarantee. Just as John would always follow Sherlock, Sherlock would always follow John.

As he pulled open the heavy doors he realized the building was a church. John himself hadn't set foot in a church of any kind for any reason in years, but he could be reverent of beauty even if he couldn't be reverent of god.

Inside was a world of gleaming marble, shining in the light coming through the stained glass. Pale columns arched high above them, the ceiling forming little domes that looked sewn together by golden paint. It was the type of place that called for choruses of hallelujah, for choir voices echoing and words spoken in Latin. John forgot all about the Bernini for a while, lost in the scent of melting candle wax and the blue of the ceiling above him, placid as a summer sky. The domes were painted with a galaxy of gold stars, shining, purely ethereal. There were few people sharing this heaven with him, most of them silent, one tourist now and then reaching out a hand to point at the secret sky. John could hear his footsteps echo, a jarring but natural sound in such a place.

John stopped in front of a large black and gold piece attached to one of the columns, deliberately warped in its carving to look like cloth. The effect was something like a Dali painting, a memorial that could melt off the column like the candles melted down till they extinguished themselves.

"I suppose _traditional_ is a relative term." Sherlock came to a stop beside him, so close again, staring up at the piece. "The memorial to Maria Raggi." John looked up at him, at his face inclined, a face that Bernini would likely have enjoyed immortalizing if he were alive today. The Bernini didn't matter. John could have seen hundreds of them. But none of them would compare to this, to Sherlock Holmes underneath a backdrop of painted stars, high above his head like a crown. Sculptures had weight to them, they were anchors, but Sherlock looked like he could disappear into thin air if given the opportunity. John had heard stories of people who cried when they saw works of art, heard that some people were overcome with a physical ache in the pit of their stomach when faced with something beautiful that had survived for centuries. And while he was never one for tears, he understood the ache now, and it hurt far more than his wounds from Afghanistan had.

"It's beautiful, though, isn't it? In its way?" Sherlock continued staring at the memorial.

"Yes. God, yes. Just beautiful."

Sherlock finally looked away from the memorial, almost startled by John's tone. John couldn't decide if he looked at peace or heartbroken, but it seemed like he stared down at him for hours, eyes running over his face. He raised a hand in the small space between them, and John didn't even have time to process the gesture before Sherlock's phone sent through a text, and the sound shattered the silence. Sherlock winced, irritated, and pulled it out of his pocket, glaring at it as the screen lit up. John was so sure it was Mycroft – who else could it be, really? – and he wanted to rip the damn phone out of Sherlock's hand and hurl it to the marble floor, shatter it into pieces as punishment for interrupting. But he couldn't do that, of course, however much he wanted to.

"We have an early day tomorrow," Sherlock said, voice quieter than before. "Best get home."

John gave a small nod and walked silently with him out into the fading Roman light.

... ... ...

When they approached the front of their hotel, it took John a few steps to realize Sherlock was not beside him anymore. He turned around, panicking at first, wondering where he could have disappeared to, and then he saw him at the edge of the alley, down on one knee with his hand extended. John stood there confused for a moment before he saw the dog cautiously stick its head out from under a parked car. When the dog licked his hand, Sherlock ruffled its ears and the dog perked up. Sherlock pulled a bit of rope from his pocket, and John realized he'd planned to get the dog from the start if it was still there. He carefully looped the rope around the dog's neck, and it stood obediently and gazed up at him like he was his savior. The dog was underfed, scrawny, really, and probably needed a few baths to wash off the dust, but Sherlock didn't seem to care, and he walked the dog to the front door of the hotel, waiting for John to go inside ahead of them.

The staff either didn't notice or didn't care.

The three of them stood in the elevator as it ascended, chiming as they passed each floor.

"You know, they probably don't allow dogs in here, Sherlock."

He scoffed. "My brother is the British government. They can take their complaints to him."

When they got to their suite, Sherlock immediately set out a bowl of water from the kitchenette, and then made a quick call requesting food and supplies. He looked after the Irish Setter so fondly that all John could do was stand in the living room and stare blankly.

"You like dogs?"

Sherlock looked up from the animal, his hand still running through its fur. "Of course. Why?"

John laughed under his breath. "Well, that just doesn't seem quite like you. I figured you were a cat person."

"On the contrary, in a world full of opportunistic, fickle, and unpleasant organisms, dogs are perhaps the only creatures left on this earth that I have total faith in."

John hesitated, hating his hands for being empty, for having nothing to fidget with. "You compared me to a dog the first day I met you."

"Now and then one stumbles upon a human being worthy of such a comparison. Not often. But sometimes."

"You said I was like a lost dog."

Sherlock paused, pushing himself to his feet, the dog too attached to leave his side. _That_ John understood.

"You _were_ lost."

"Past tense?"

"I wouldn't say you're lost anymore, would you?"

"No, I guess not." John stepped forward, petting the dog's head.

"I hope you never are again."

"I think that's a safe bet," he said, looking up at him.

"Hopefully." He shook himself out of whatever dark corner he'd been in all evening. "I'm thinking Henry."

"What?"

"The dog. I think I'll call him Henry, after Henry Every."

"Who?"

"The pirate."

John couldn't stop the laugh from escaping him, and after a moment, even Sherlock was forced to concede and laugh with him. "Sure, he looks like a Henry. Just don't let your brother find out why you named him that. He'll never let you live it down." The dog nudged John's hand, already missing the human contact, touch-starved.

When he reached out to it, he did so blindly, and his hand collided with Sherlock's, already on the dog's neck. He didn't know at first whether to freeze where he was or to jerk his hand away, and Sherlock seemed equally stilled.

John hadn't understood what Sherlock meant when he'd said _lost_ earlier, but he felt like he quite suddenly realized what _lost_ meant when Sherlock's skin was no longer against his.

The golden twilight had faded to black, and the only stars that came through the window were the lights from outside the hotel, fighting with the dim lamp light in the living room.

"You said we'd have a long day tomorrow?"

"Long _days_. This will take a while."

"When do you think we'll be back in Baker Street?"

"Not sure. A few weeks, perhaps. Why?"

"Just thinking ahead. I'll be glad to have this case behind me. I'm sick of thinking about it."

"So what next?"

"What do you mean?"

"What comes after you put this case behind you?"

"I honestly have no idea."

"Do you hate not knowing as much as I do?"

"I doubt it, but god knows I don't enjoy it."

Sherlock smiled, softer than his usual amused grin that he would give John whenever he was pleased with one of John's sharp remarks.

"Best not worry about it now, I suppose. As is usually the case, I'm sure the answer will become clear in time." The smiled widened, became one of those flashes that made him seem more alive than a regular human being. John couldn't help but smile back at him. Sherlock took a few steps back, the dog following at his hells. He glanced over his shoulder as he turned away to walk to his room. "Till tomorrow then. Goodnight, John."

"Goodnight."

He watched as Sherlock's door shut behind him, feeling the stillness of his absence creep over the room. The coming days would allow for no good mornings and no goodnights. The coming days would allow, for them, hardly anything at all.

* * *

A/N: suggested listening - post/34077939360/im-just-going-to-take-a-moment-to-shamelessly


	6. The Repeated Image of the Lover Destroye

**The Repeated Image of the Lover Destroyed**

" _I'm not really sure why I do it, but in this version you  
are not/feeding yourself to a bad man/against a black sky  
prickled with small lights./I take it back./The wooden halls  
like caskets. These terms for the lower depths./I take them  
back./Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed."_

It was never supposed to happen this way.

It was all fine, initially. They had gone to the Borghese and canvassed the place, Sherlock attempting to not become distracted by the works of art and failing. The day had been so calm, so easy and worry free that John had laughed at the very idea of _long days_ in Rome. He felt like they spent more time being tourists than working in those first few days leading up to the Bernini exhibition. They'd walked around, either entirely silent or talking incessantly about all manner of things, crossing through street after sun-baked street, often accompanied by the Irish Setter. John understood why so many people were still visiting this city after all these centuries. It was alive in a way that few places were.

One night, John almost went back to the church, perhaps wanting to somehow recreate that moment of peace and silence they had achieved just a few nights before. But he lost his nerve. Sherlock would see through something like that.

The night the exhibition opened was a flurry of formal clothes and expensive drinks, absurdly rich people from all countries and walks of life. And the security detail was so extensive that it seemed superfluous for the two of them to even be there. They clearly had it under control.

And then the texts came, one after another on Sherlock's phone, all signed with JM. Names. Names of every last person in the building. Names of their children. Names of all the priceless pieces collected under the museum's roof. And the riddles, the taunts, they had sent Sherlock into a frenzy. The threats he didn't mind, but the riddles drove him mad, especially when punctuated by the numerical countdown texts, the occasional message of, "Tick tock, Mr. Holmes."

The evacuation had been pandemonium. Security workers escorting all those perfect champagne-and-diamonds benefactors out of the building, setting up police blockades for miles in every direction. They would never have known to evacuate had Sherlock not solved the riddle. John had chased after him, like always, and once the bomb was found, John dragged him outside himself. Sherlock had protested, wanting to help more, but John just yelled at him about him being a detective not a bomb defuser. They stood with the rest of the crowd outside, jumping at every sound, expecting the gallery to explode in flames in front of them at any second.

"But I could _help_ , John!"

"You don't know a bloody goddamn thing about disarming bombs, Sherlock!"

The ordeal had lasted long into the night, hours and hours of tense jittery nerves and the Roman heat suffocating the crowds outside the gallery. Of course, everyone had thanked Sherlock for figuring it out, but he hardly heard them. He was still more concerned with the text messages on his phone, still coming at steady intervals. Even after the crisis was over, the texts kept coming, still naming names. It had Sherlock worked into a panic.

 _Martha Hudson_.

 _Greg Lestrade._

 _John Watson._

When they were more or less safely back in their rooms, the sunrise creeping up over the city, the texts still came. The three names over and over.

Sherlock didn't sleep a single hour.

The long days began.

... ... ...

John didn't truly grasp the gravity of the situation until he became the next bomb that needed to be defused. He had never dreamed that this was anything but another case, impersonal, not about them, just about the crime. But it _was_ about them.

Sherlock had stopped mid-sentence when he'd walked through their front door and saw John sitting on the sofa, a bomb strapped to his chest.

John didn't know what he expected his first encounter with the bystander to be like, but it wasn't this. The man was no bystander, was nothing close to an ordinary, average human. He was waiting for John and Henry when they'd come inside, dressed in an expensive suit and sporting a Kubrickian smile.

Henry had run into a bedroom and hid under the bed, and John thought to himself that if this bastard dared to hurt that fucking dog that he would end him himself.

"I'd put that phone down if I were you, Mr. Holmes," he said from the balcony behind John. Sherlock did as he was told, setting it down on a side table. "It's rather entertaining, that I can make you go wherever I want. All the way to Italy, just because I said so."

"Leave him out of this. Whatever it is you're hoping to accomplish, just take me. Not him."

"Sherlock, I'll gladly take all three of us with the push of a button, us and this whole building. Do I really strike you as the type with a strong sense of self-preservation?" He walked inside, leaving the French doors open to the night air, the lights and distant sounds of people in the streets so deceptive in their apparent safety. "Besides, everyone has a pressure point. Did you honestly think I didn't know yours? How else will I make you listen?"

Sherlock's eyes became animalistic then, violent and enraged. He took one step toward them – Moriarty standing calmly at the end of the sofa – and the red spots of sniper sights bloomed across his chest in a dizzying spray.

"I really wouldn't." Moriarty jerked his head toward John. "It's poetic justice, don't you think? Involving him in all this dramatic lost art business?"

"What do you mean, poetic justice?"

"Your army doctor is quite the fan of lost works of art, if I recall. But that's beside the point."

"What _is_ the point, if you don't mind?" Sherlock said through his teeth, his patience wearing thin.

"A taste of things to come, my dear. I can do a lot more damage than blowing up some socialites and statues."

When Moriarty crossed the room, coming within feet of Sherlock, Sherlock recoiled like one would do when confronted with a venomous snake.

"I believe we'll be seeing a great deal of each other in the coming days, Mr. Holmes."

He left so simply, like a friend saying goodbye after catching up with you, and when he snapped his fingers, the sniper sights vanished.

At the first opportunity, Sherlock slammed the door to their rooms shut and threw the deadbolt into place. He forgot about the phone, which buzzed on the side table, likely with more texts from Moriarty.

John's breath escaped him like a person who had nearly drowned, the reality dawning on him that he had very nearly been killed. But it seemed to hit Sherlock harder, as he fell to his knees in front of him, ripping at the vest holding the explosives, hands shaking.

"Sherlock, _Sherlock_ , calm down, Jesus, I'm okay." Even as he said it though, a voice in the back of his mind brought forth every possible bad outcome, every concern. These rooms had been their home away from home. You should always feel safe in your own home. And if he found it so simple to get to them here, what if he one day was waiting for them in Baker Street, tucked into a corner like a spider?

Sherlock pulled the bomb off, nearly jerking John's shoulder to a painful angle in the process. He hurled it across the room, the dead sounding smack of it as it hit the wall unsettling and final. John wondered if he was even thinking about Moriarty's odd remark about John being connected to lost art, or if he was so consumed in the moment that he couldn't even begin to think about what it meant. John suspected the latter, and was grateful. That wasn't a conversation to have right now. Sherlock was near hyperventilating, unable to do anything except kneel there in front of John while the warm breeze pulled at the curtains around the French doors. Sherlock had a hand wrapped around John's wrist, the points of his fingertips nearly digging into John's skin.

 _Pressure points._

Sherlock wouldn't look up at him, his head bowed and eyes glazed over. The great Sherlock Holmes, impervious and calculating, ever-ready and composed, was still just a human being. It never occurred to John that Sherlock, despite his choice of occupation, had never been in a war zone of any kind until now. For once, John knew something he didn't: how to hold it together despite the chaos and destruction surrounding you every minute of the day. Sherlock couldn't bounce back to baseline so easily. John couldn't help but think of something Sholto used to say, a quote he would throw around when they were stuck in a particularly miserable situation, heartbroken and exhausted and touched by death in a hundred ways:

"Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this."

But what awful sights had Sherlock really seen? Murders, sure. Violence and sadness. But wars? He was unfamiliar with those, and just now realizing he had wandered into one.

John reached out his free hand, intending originally to place it on Sherlock's shoulder in an attempt at a comforting gesture. But at the last second, on impulse, he instead let his hand rest cradling Sherlock's head, carding his fingers through his hair. It was pointless to say anything. They had never been good at speeches. But it didn't matter now with Sherlock forcing his breathing to return to normal, with his hand still clutching John's arm, with all the things they couldn't stay hovering between them.

After a while, Henry emerged from his hiding place. He rested his head on the small free space on one of John's knees, the only space within his reach that was not occupied by Sherlock. The dog let out a low whine.

John wanted to move, to slide off the couch and kneel down beside Sherlock, to wrap his arms around him instead of this fleeting and distant touch, this single hand against him. He actually considered it, considered eliminating those final boundaries, but in the end he only sighed, deciding that this was neither the time nor the place for such things. Later, back in Baker Street, back where things were safer.

If he shut his eyes, he could almost pretend that they were home.

... ... ...

Across the room, as the breeze pulled at the filmy curtains swirling at the open French doors, Sherlock's phone buzzed on the side table. Over and over the little sound escaped it, but the two of them ignored it.

Later that night Sherlock would find his phone flooded with text messages, all of which said the same thing.

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

... ... ...

"English detective Sherlock Holmes has made a name for himself here in Italy in a matter of days. It is no wonder the sleuth is so well-known and widely loved in his home country. After a series of threats made against the Borghese were connected to the bombing at the Hickman Gallery in London earlier this year, Holmes made the trip to Italy in hopes of preventing another wide scale disaster. And he succeeded." The subtitles continued to scroll at the bottom of the television as footage from the Borghese played, all the worried men and women in their gowns and suits, Sherlock front and center talking to the bomb squad. It looked like a helpful collaboration. The reality was that Sherlock was ripping into them for not doing a better job scanning the place for explosives before the event. John was never mentioned in these news reports. Now and then a magazine would include his name back in London, but for the most part, he was an almost invisible man, though if he was being honest with himself, he didn't really mind.

Sherlock picked up the remote, smashing the button and making the screen go dark and silent. He was sick of the news stories, sick of the reporters outside their building asking him questions, sick of the attention he was getting for his supposed heroics back in London.

If he had known what was coming next, he might now have been so quick to dismiss the press.

... ... ...

They turned.

In less than twenty-four hours all the major news networks went from singing Sherlock's praises to unearthing all sorts of "evidence" that he was, in fact, the person responsible for the threats and bombings. That Moriarty was a front, that this was all some grand scheme for fortune and glory. Everything, every innocuous detail of Sherlock's life was suddenly available to the public, and skewed in such a way that their lies didn't sound all that farfetched.

A lowlife American reporter was outside their building at one point, asking who John _really_ was, insinuating that they were partners in crime despite John's pristine military record. Sherlock tore into the man, likely would have grabbed him by his clothes and shaken him had John not pulled him back.

"Say what you want about me, but don't you _dare_ drag him into this. You pathetic –"

"Sherlock! Not worth it!" The reporter stared at the two of them, slightly frightened, in over his head. But then again, they were all in over their heads.

Calls kept coming in on Sherlock's phone. When Lestrade called, asking what the hell was going on, Sherlock only hung up, telling John that the news was reaching England. Sherlock refused to take any calls that weren't from Mycroft, and those he always took in another room.

Lestrade tried to call John as well, but after hesitating, John clicked the "decline call" button and shoved his phone in his pocket. How would he even begin to explain all this to Lestrade, anyway?

There were reporters outside their living room door, banging on it, asking questions through it. Crowds of them swarmed like flies outside their building despite management's best efforts. Time seemed to speed up in a way that John was unfamiliar with, a horrible creeping sense of dread that everything was hurtling toward something that they had no chance in hell of stopping.

John wished suddenly that it was still those few hours after Moriarty had strapped a bomb to him, those precious hours alone with Sherlock in their living room, because at least that was a sort of peace. They had none now. They were never alone, always hounded by reporters and police and media whores, all inundated on every channel with new developments in the case of the world's greatest fake, Sherlock Holmes.

There had been a point, the shouts of reporters still audible through the door, that Sherlock had asked, quietly, "You don't believe what they're saying, do you?"

"Christ, Sherlock, no I don't. How could I?"

Sherlock had only stared at him before starting at the bang of a fist on their door.

Things began to blur. John began losing any sense of time or place. Instead everything was one long single moment, all smashed together by a human memory that couldn't keep up. In a way, it felt unreal, like such a thing could never happen to them. But John remembered that it was unreal that he had ever even met Sherlock Holmes in the first place.

When they pushed their way out of their building, there were police cars waiting on them, planning to arrest Sherlock. Before John could rip them apart, before he could be indignant, Sherlock bolted. Though he knew Sherlock was innocent, running always looked guilty.

Of course John ran after him. And their world unraveled.

For the first time, neither of them could stop to be in awe at Rome, at the wonders they ran past without a second glance. Rome became a backdrop, a series of side streets to hide in, police sirens echoing off the stone fronts of buildings, twirling lights glimpsed in nanoseconds before hairpin turns sent them down a safer street.

They cut through the Piazza della Minerva, the ridiculous Bernini elephant no longer amusing. Instead, its obelisk cast its shadow over them, the street lights silhouetting it as it towered above them, a sharp and vaguely threatening monument to everything that had gone wrong. Even farther above, all but a few bright stars were blocked out by the city light, by the clouds creeping over them and the moon like cataracts.

A few blocks farther and Sherlock came to a screeching halt, blindly reaching out and grabbing John by the wrist, pulling him into an alley. John could still hear the sirens, and the wide eyes and breathlessness that had taken over Sherlock produced an immediate sinking feeling of _no_.

Sherlock held him by his arms, and said only, "Run."

"What the fuck are you talking about!"

"Mycroft will have a car for you outside our building."

"I'm not _leaving_ in the middle of this, are you insane?" The wild look on Sherlock's face almost made John wonder if maybe he was.

Sherlock took one hand off John, reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone. He turned the screen toward him, harsh light revealing text messages.

"Do you see this?" Sherlock held the screen inches from John's face. "I am not the one in danger here, John, you are, and I will _not_ let you get killed because of this madman."

The phone's screen read:

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

 _John Watson._

"It's a taunt. This is no longer a case, John. You need to go."

"No!" He hated how he sounded, like a stubborn child.

Sherlock replaced the phone, his hand back on John's arm in seconds.

"Do you trust me?"

"What?"

"If you trust me you will do as I ask and go, for the love of god, run. Everything will be all right, but you are not safe."

"But you –"

"I'm fine. I'll be fine. It's all fine. John just do this one thing for me, just do as I ask this one time, and I will never ask anything of you ever again, _please_." He wasn't speaking authoritatively anymore. He was all desperation and quiet words, no longer wild, but begging.

Even with the sirens, everything felt silent.

"Sherlock. What the hell is going on?" He forced himself to speak calmly, tried not to devolve into shouting.

"I'll explain it all soon, I promise. There isn't time right now. Have you ever had a reason to doubt me?"

Without hesitation, he shook his head. "No, absolutely not."

Sherlock's face flooded with relief, and without another word his hands moved to John's face, cradling it with care, and he kissed him.

It took John so off guard that by the time his brain processed what was happening – beyond _oh dear god, finally_ – the lips and hands were gone, and there was a moment's pause, some spoken promise by Sherlock, before he took off and vanished.

John stood there for a few agonizing seconds, trying to make sense of too many things at once. He looked around the alley, hating his inability to focus on anything important, anything _at all_ besides Sherlock Holmes' mouth on his. He finally worked out the direction Sherlock had gone, and promises be damned, he started off in the same direction. Why had Sherlock ever believed him? Why had he ever trusted that John would flee like Lot leaving Sodom? He should have known better.

The only time John stopped was when he head the first gunshot, a single one, rapid and abrupt. His stomach sank even though the sirens still screamed a few blocks away.

He was at a full run when the new round of gunfire echoed off the buildings, new and ancient brought together by that harsh metallic finality. So many bullets, one after another after another. The police? No, couldn't be just police trying to apprehend a single man.

John burst into the Piazza della Minerva, the obelisk's shadow cutting across the rapidly growing crowd of people, lights flicking on inside the buildings, scattered screams and shouts. He came to a sickening halt behind the crowd, all the people huddled around, what, exactly? Yelling for ambulances and police.

 _Why did I ever let him leave? Why did I let him run?_

Through a break in one of the crowds, through all the chaos, he saw Moriarty's body laid out on the stones, eyes staring up at the sky, unseeing. The image barely registered; who gave a damn about that sorry bastard anyway?

When he pushed through the second crowd he wished he hadn't.

Even though the shouting and noise continued, it all fell to silence in John's ears, replaced by the once-familiar ringing, the signal of _you won't last much longer before you pass out_. He pushed through the people, shouting at some of them to get out of the way. Some let him pass, others trying to hold him back as he broke into the circle, his lungs feeling squeezed to death inside him. All that mattered was Sherlock dead on the ground, surrounded by a pool of blood, and even as he reached for his wrist, he knew he wouldn't find a pulse.

A new set of hands pulled at him, more strong and insistent than the Romans and the tourists. He saw the black car out of the corner of his eye – Mycroft's people, fucking of course – and the men, Mycroft's hired hands, grabbed at his arms and physically dragged him away despite his fighting.

He had never been forced into a car, not like this. In the past, Mycroft's kidnappings had always had a certain amount of show to them, like a father who wrestled with a child and kept his grip deliberately lose so the child could break away if he wanted to. But this, this was force. As the door opened, it flashed a reflection of the obelisk before opening up the chasm of the car's interior.

Mycroft was inside, calm as ever, and John despised him for his calm. No one should be unfazed when their brother was dead in the square, surrounded by gawking bystanders and indifferent police. John tried to swing at him, thought he deserved to land at least one punch, but the men held him down, and all he could do was scream.

" _You_ did this to him!"

Mycroft refused to answer.

... ... ...

"Tragedy has stricken down one of London's most beloved citizens today. While investigating threats made against several museums and galleries in Italy, detective Sherlock Holmes was killed, gunned down in the Piazza della Minerva in Rome. Police reports state that the bullets were of military quality, likely shot from a long-distance sniper-style rifle. The shooting is quickly becoming the most talked about and questioned shooting since Kennedy. Many have speculated on who the shooter could be, comprising lists of all sorts, from James Moriarty's private army to an inside job organized by Holmes' own brother. Moriarty himself was also found dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The bullet in Moriarty, however, did not match those found in Sherlock Holmes.

"As the search for the gunman who murdered Holmes continues, London mourns his loss. Many people have set up memorials outside Holmes' home in Baker Street, leaving letters of condolences to his family and friends. Holmes' funeral is scheduled for later this week, but the public is asked to please keep a respectful distance so that the detective's loved ones may mourn him in peace. Holmes is survived by his older brother, a government official, his parents, and his partner John Watson."

He didn't know what to think about them leaving the word _partner_ ambiguous.

Within days, new evidence was uncovered, evidence more or less exonerating Sherlock of the worst of the crimes people had begun to accuse him of. Everyone walked around pretending that they hadn't believed it, even for a moment, not wanting to be the person who doubted a martyr. The press turned as quickly as it had the first time. Now he was a hero, an innocent wrapped up in a madman's scheme.

It was no consolation that Moriarty was dead. What did it matter?

John refused to speak to Mycroft. Any time he tried to call him, he hit _ignore_. Any time he knocked at Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson, per John's request, turned him away. He wouldn't give the time of day to someone as cold and indifferent as Mycroft.

This meant radio silence, which was about all he could handle.

He hated himself, a few nights after he was brought back to England, because he had been stupid and sentimental enough to dial his phone number. The phone was out of service of course – what's the point in keeping a dead man's phone on? – but that hardly mattered. It wasn't as if Sherlock had ever properly set up voice mail. It would have only been the default recording, _please leave a message_ and so on, not his own voice, the only voice John wanted to hear.

Mrs. Hudson walked on eggshells, only coming up to their rooms with offers of food, otherwise keeping as many people as possible away. Hell, even Henry would only venture upstairs when he thought it was safe. At some point the chatter of reporters and bystanders disappeared outside on the pavement, and when John pulled the curtain back to look out, he saw guards instead of crowds. No doubt an olive branch from Mycroft.

When sleep would finally come, it brought the dreams with it, the nightmares that would shoot him up in bed, leaving him with his heart pounding as the passing cars outside swept shafts of light over Baker Street. He hadn't been able to even look in Sherlock's room. But when the dreams would wake him, he'd be tempted, so tempted to go downstairs, to drown himself in the familiar. Instead he would sit up alone, hands to his head and near tears, mentally cursing the entire goddamn world for what it had done. The painting didn't even haunt him from its place in his closet. The Vermeer seemed meaningless now.

He had a nearly constant headache from the lack of sleep and alcohol and nervous panics. The pain grew almost comforting in its consistency. But still, some nights it was so sharp that it rivaled the stabbing feeling in his chest that accompanied every vision of blood and death that permeated his exhausted brain.

The worst dreams weren't the ones of violence, though. At least he had seen enough violence that he knew what to expect from those. No, the worst ones were about skin on skin and hesitant fingers and brick-walled alleyways and shared breaths. Those were the ones that would wake him up and reduce him to a bitter, boiling rage and a sadness so heavy that it felt like an excavation in his chest.

But he was even chilled by his own thoughts some nights, his own conscious thoughts, not the ones his dreams attacked him with.

 _I wish we had just been killed when Moriarty strapped a bomb to me._

He would try to stop the thoughts, but always failed.

 _If something like this was going to happen, why couldn't it happen in our living room in Rome with the balcony doors open? Why can't I have that, us taken out by the bomb or the snipers, instead? Why did I have to have Sherlock's body in the goddamn Piazza instead?_

 _Why couldn't they have just taken us out then?_

He never came up with answers, never could find any sort of rationality behind Moriarty's ideas. He only came to the conclusion that it would have been a blessing, just letting it all end in that room in Rome instead of _this_.

And why had neither of them said it, that afternoon? Why hadn't one of them broken the silence, with Sherlock kneeling in front of him and John's hand on his head? Why hadn't they said what both of them knew damn well enough that day? Why did the goddamn _I love you_ have to be silent?

He knew why. They thought they had more time. The afternoon with the bomb told them it was something that would have to be addressed sooner or later, but they thought there was time enough for that to wait. After all, they were in the middle of the most stressful case of their lives, so it was perfectly rational to wait until they had some time, right?

And the kiss. That would have had to have been addressed too.

John hated that neither of them had just said it. Although Sherlock did, in his way. Leave it to Sherlock Holmes to spring a kiss in a crisis, and then be incapable of living long enough to follow it up, not even long enough for John to ask _what the hell was that?_

And why couldn't the kiss have been in a better time, a better place? Why in the midst of crisis, in what felt like a split second? Why hadn't either of them crossed that last boundary in the church under all those golden stars, when a kiss could have felt like it lasted hours, a kiss of stained glass and marble instead of bricks and sirens?

 _Why, why, why?_

There was one night bad enough that his thoughts turned even darker, one of the rare nights now in which he remembered the painting existed, haunting him.

 _I wish I had just been killed at the Hickman, instead of having to live with all of this._

They had never had enough time.

When he woke up one morning, his eyes were edged in tears, and the only memories he had in those first moments upon waking were of stained glass and stars, and kisses ended too soon.

* * *

A/N: This fic exists because of my now nine month long preoccupation with a novel called The Goldfinch [this fic is more or less an AU of it], specifically, this part, which was what made me give in and write this: post/99355870549/later-in-the-cab-and-afterward-i


	7. Litany

**Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out**

" _Every morning the maple leaves./Every morning another  
chapter where the hero shifts/from one foot to the other.  
Every morning the same big/and little words all spelling out  
desire, all spelling out/_You will be alone always and then  
you will die. _/So maybe I wanted to give you something more  
than a catalog/of non-definitive acts,/something other than desperation."_

It was always her place, never his.

Usually she would let it lie, not pry and ask over and over why he seemed so hesitant to take her back to his own flat. Usually she ignored that detail entirely. But now and then she would ask, "Why don't we go to your place tonight?" And all he could do was make some lame excuse to avoid ever letting that happen. Baker Street could not be touched by her.

It wasn't that she wasn't fun to be around. In fact, when she'd first started working at the clinic with him, it was one of the first times he'd caught himself laugh at anything since returning from Rome. But Mary was still somehow part of a different world than he was, which admittedly was true for most of his coworkers and acquaintances. There was the regular workaday world they all inhabited, and then there was the Baker Street world that John couldn't bring himself to leave. Mixing the two in any way seemed to carry with it a sense that the world would collapse if the two ever met. And it might have. Somehow that felt like such a real possibility that John continued to keep Mary away from Baker Street, even if only so he wouldn't have to explain why he had left all of Sherlock's things in their proper places so long after he'd died.

But he told himself he could do it. He could pretend to be a normal, functioning human being like everyone else he knew. Surely many of them had endured horrible tragedies and still managed to carry on. Why couldn't he do the same?

If he was being honest with himself, it wasn't going well. But he had actively avoided being honest with himself for weeks.

Mary was nice, seemed eager to get to known him better, always tried to brighten the gloomier days with sharp, witty remarks and was by all accounts perfectly amicable company. And she was a distraction. Now and then, John would actually lose himself for a few minutes, caught up with being around her, and so, not thinking about Sherlock. But inevitably, when he was home alone in Baker Street, Sherlock crept back into his mind again, latching onto his brain and never giving him a moment's peace.

He was around Mary plenty, but not always _with_ her. But he was going through the motions, and he knew well enough that sometimes if you went through the motions long enough, it quit being an act and finally became reality.

It just seemed to be taking a lot longer than he'd expected.

The sense of detachment scared John at times, that troubling emptiness that filled all his interactions, especially those with Mary. He wondered if she noticed, if she could tell that he was just playing at normality and not really achieving it.

Perhaps pointedly, Mary never mentioned Sherlock. Surely she knew, since Sherlock had become such a public figure near the end of his life, since she was an avid reader of the news and had likely seen all the stories about the end in Rome. But she never spoke up, never asked John all those questions that any girlfriend would want to ask. For a while, he was grateful, but when Mary finally broke her silence and asked about it one night, John hated her months of silence, feeling like they'd only been a steady buildup to what devolved into a cold and distant conversation.

What could he really say to her? That he'd been broken so many times, and was finally beginning to feel whole again when everything was taken away? That Rome was harder for him to live with than the Hickman and Afghanistan combined? That his frequent solitary trips to art galleries were the only ways he could find anything remotely close to silence in a world that seemed to never shut up? That he had somehow fallen in love with the most extraordinary person on the planet, and that even more remarkably, the person had likely loved him back?

He told her a harsh, to the point account of what had happened, a monologue more emotionless than the news reports had been. No big deal, everyone's friends die eventually, it was just a worse death than usual. "I've survived worse traumas," he said to her, sure that she could hear something like a lie in his words.

One weekend when she wanted to see him, he told her he was busy Saturday night, that he was going to an exhibition opening.

"Can I come too, then?"

There was that buzzing silence on the phone as John counted the seconds, knowing each one that he remained silent for just sounded more incriminating. "I'll see you Monday," he said, not answering and answering at the same time.

"Why do you spend so much time in all these museums, John? You're a doctor, not a painter."

All he said was, "I like art."

... ... ...

The museums were still comforting to a certain extent, certainly more soothing an atmosphere than the clinic or Mary's flat, but now and then he'd catch an Italian piece out of the corner of his eye and feel an almost instinctive stabbing sensation in his stomach. He tried to stick to the French and English galleries since every white marble sculpture and any Renaissance painting just made him miserable.

But he noticed things in the museums that he didn't notice before when he used them as an Afghanistan coping mechanism. Like how any dust that wasn't cleaned away stood out so much more because it had to be compared to the otherwise pristine surroundings. Or how people whispering echoed strangely in the larger rooms in a way that almost made them sound like he imagined ghosts would. Or how whenever a child would run across the poured concrete floors, it sounded like a smack of thunder.

But it was better than the infuriating silence in Baker Street.

... ... ...

Mary accused him once of their relationship being a placeholder for something else, and when he asked what, she just stood there staring at him, arms crossed over her chest.

"You know what."

"Sherlock?" She nodded. "Mary, he was my friend. You're my girlfriend. They're completely different relationships."

"It just seems like it's taken you a lot longer than it should to move on."

He hated her for a moment, then, and found his voice getting low and almost hateful, cold. "When _you_ spend years watching people get blown up in the Middle East, when _you_ barely survive a terror bombing and have to see disembodied limbs where whole people used to be, and when _you_ find your best friend shot down in a pool of his own blood, _then_ we'll talk about how quickly someone should move on."

That night, he stayed in Baker Street, alone, hating that she had picked up on the horribly temporary feel of their relationship. He made a promise to try harder, to actually be present when he was with her, and to actually move on, even if only a little. Because he hated that she was right, that he couldn't spend the rest of his life mourning. But there was no way she could possibly begin to understand the entire situation.

After a few weeks, he was almost good at masquerading as a healthy, functioning human being. Mary seemed pleased.

... ... ...

"Why don't we ever go to your flat, John?"

"What do you mean?"

"We always stay at mine. Never yours."

"I hadn't really thought about it," he said, putting his hands behind his head on the pillow so that they wouldn't be on her.

"Every time I suggest it you say no."

"Your flat is more comfortable, I suppose."

"More comfortable?"

"Yeah. Mine's in an old building. Creaky floors, heater that doesn't work too well, mismatched wallpaper and furniture. Yours actually looks like it belongs to a responsible adult." He smiled, hoping it was convincing and self-deprecating enough to suit her.

"I think it'd be nice to see your home," she said.

"I didn't say my flat was my home. In fact to be honest, I don't know that it ever has been." He left off the second half of this thought: it was only home if Sherlock was also in it.

"Then why not get rid of it entirely? We could just move in together. We've been dating long enough. Most couples would have already moved in."

"I'm a slow mover, Mary." At least that was true. He now believed it was part of why he kept Sherlock at arm's length for so long.

"You don't like it,"she said. "Whenever I ask questions like that."

"I'm also not much for emotional stands, either."

"Don't I know it. How did you ever manage to have girlfriends before? They must have gone crazy with this whole moody and quiet thing."

"Never really had one, honestly. Not a proper one. Never got very serious. Another fault."

"I'm willing to work with that." She smiled, trying to brush everything off as she always did. He could feel her wanting to say more, actually holding herself back from all the things she would rather say. "Especially since I think I may very well love you."

He knew he couldn't say it back, knew she would hear the lie. He kissed her so he wouldn't have to say anything at all.

... ... ...

One night when he was feeling particularly masochistic, he sat up in his room alone, and propped the Vermeer against the wall. Now and then he would think there really was no sense in keeping it hidden away anymore. He could hang it on his bedroom wall and no one would ever see it. Mrs. Hudson never came up to his room. The only one who ever had was Sherlock, and that wasn't an issue anymore, was it?

The news had died down about the missing Vermeer, reporters distracted by bigger and more dramatic things, but John was sure there were still people looking for it. They would never find it in his flat, of course. Why would anyone look?

It wasn't an ugly painting either, and would have looked nice on the wall, even if he was the only one who ever saw it. But the jittery feeling in him still had horrible thoughts about police breaking down his door and arresting him for having it. So he knew that within hours he would banish it back to its suitcase in the back of the closet.

He sat on the edge of his bed, leaning his arms on his legs, staring at the painting a few feet away. It was a city skyline, sure, but the really wonderful thing about it, the thing that really made it beautiful, was the night sky above the city, all the stars showing through the clouds. It was almost a shame that he'd never shown it to Sherlock. Despite the man's almost scientific detachment to all things beautiful, John at least knew that somewhere in him, he had a weakness for the stars. He would likely have loved the lost Vermeer.

There had been many nights where John had sat in the same spot, debating whether or not he should take the painting out to look at it. He always ended up leaving it hidden. The chances that Sherlock would venture up to his room were slim; it wasn't a common occurrence, but it was _there_ enough to make him cautious.

So many of his interactions with Sherlock looked differently colored in retrospect, changed in meaning by all that had happened in Rome. For a while he let himself be haunted by one such interaction, when Sherlock had shown up in his doorway unexpectedly, catching him seemingly staring into space, lost in thought. His appearance had startled him, and Sherlock was, as always, hyperaware of these reactions, but instead of dissecting it like he often did, he let it lie.

John couldn't even remember what they'd talked about, or why Sherlock had even come upstairs in the first place. Surely it was something about a case? All he knew was that Sherlock seemed reluctant to go back downstairs, and stood for far longer than John would have expected in the doorway, hands in his pockets. Now and then he would cut his eyes to the closet door that had been in John's line of sight, but it never took much to draw his eyes away. All John had to do was speak, and suddenly Sherlock was sufficiently distracted.

He knew that he had almost told Sherlock to sit down if he was going to hang around, instead of just standing there talking. But the only place available for anyone to sit in John's Spartan bedroom was on the bed, and the invitation would have seemed too pointed in Sherlock's eyes, despite its innocuous intentions. There just simply wasn't any other furniture, and John was sure he was getting sick of standing. But Sherlock was good at making something out of nothing.

Of course, looking back, John wondered how innocent his own invitation really would have been, and was painfully aware of the fact that any ulterior meanings Sherlock might have deduced from such a thing would have, in fact, been spot on.

Well. At least Sherlock Holmes showing up in his room was one problem he didn't have to worry about anymore.

... ... ...

He had only gone into Sherlock's room once after he died. Before, it had actually been a surprisingly common occurrence, usually for the sake of dragging him out of bed, or forcing him to get in it. Sherlock's sleeping patterns were notoriously inconsistent, given that he would work for days on end like an obsessive, and then would fall into long periods of physical lassitude when not otherwise occupied. There had been countless times that John had had to force him to sleep, physically pushing him down the hall telling him to go to bed. Sherlock always protested of course, claiming he was perfectly rested, and would always, without fail, be unconscious within minutes of his head hitting the pillow.

Even though he'd been in that room so many times, he had never really paid attention to it until that night he ventured inside after returning from Rome.

John wasn't sure why he'd decided it was a good idea to go to Sherlock's room that night, drink in hand. It was very late, so late that it was almost pointless to even try to sleep, and he had been sitting up in their living room all night (he still found himself saying _their_ even though it was all just _his_ now).

The room had almost as little furniture as John's, but it didn't feel so temporary. It felt comfortable, homey, like the rest of the flat. All over were little details that made the place so distinctly Sherlock's, like the periodic table on the wall. This room was _his_. John was unable to touch any of these little things, unable to dismantle the room since no one was sleeping in it anymore. He just sat down on Sherlock's bed and tried to quiet his own mind. No matter how long he sat there, he couldn't decide if the room made him feel more at peace, or made him feel like jumping out of the goddamn window.

There was only one item he removed from this preserved site. A newspaper dated the day they left for Rome, opened to a story tucked into one of the back pages about some threats made against an Italian gallery.

John picked up the paper from the top of Sherlock's dresser and, without so much as reading the little column, threw it into the fireplace.

... ... ...

He had to quit the clinic.

All the times he'd coped with Afghanistan, he was coping only with loss. Sure, he was friends with many people who died, but none of them were Sherlock Holmes. As much as he convinced himself he was coping well enough with that loss, he still reached a point where pretending to function at work everyday became far too exhausting. How the hell could he be concerned with yearly physicals and prescriptions for antibiotics and flu vaccines when there was constantly a crushing weight on his shoulders of everything he'd been through?

I survived war, he would tell himself, I can survive this. But so many nights he wasn't so sure, and he grew to wonder how he survived the war at all.

The rent at Baker Street kept getting paid even after he quit working, Mycroft's doing, no doubt. He took a moment to be annoyed at the gesture, but knew that practically, it was a good thing. Because there was no way he could hold down a regular job and not want to die.

He didn't even tell Mary he'd quit. She found out when she showed up for work and asked Sarah where he was. When the first call had come in, he considered not answering it, but knowing it would only make the situation worse, he thought better of it, and endured the few minutes of her asking him if he was out of his mind. He wanted to say that yes, he was, and would be for the foreseeable future, that the world felt cagey and claustrophobic and he couldn't pretend to be happy around everyone else anymore. But he didn't. He just let her talk, occasionally making a little noise to show he was still listening. Her reaction was valid, he knew. Sane men didn't up and quit their jobs without telling their girlfriends. But he was beginning to think he wasn't all that sane.

"I'm just tired, Mary. I can't deal with work right now, I'm exhausted. I'm fine. I have plenty of money, it's not like I was working at the clinic to pay the bills, I was doing it to keep my license up."

She was quiet for so long he almost thought she'd hung up. But finally she said, "Maybe you should see someone, John."

"See someone?"

"Who was it that you saw when you first came back from Afghanistan? What was her name? Ella?"

"You mean the therapist I walked out on?"

"Yes."

"Why would I go back to her now?"

"Because you're not in good shape, John."

"I'm fine. Just tired."

"If you won't go get proper help, then you could at least let _me_ help you a little."

" _I'm fine_ ," he said, far too sharply. Sane men didn't snap at their girlfriends when they were only trying to help.

The silence stretched out again. It seemed they had so many of those silences.

"Fine."

She hung up.

... ... ...

Mary didn't speak to him again for three days, but when she did, he apologized for being an ass and promised that he would try harder. He didn't say at what exactly, but he knew people always liked it when people promised to try harder. It was the _promise_ part they cared about.

Their peace lasted for a good few weeks, and John thought that maybe they were past the worst of it, that maybe if he only had to deal with a relationship instead of work _and_ a relationship, that he might be able to successfully pull it off. Being normal in two scenarios was always harder than one. And removing the clinic from his daily life at least gave him a little more energy to pretend that he was happy with Mary.

The peace was oddly broken by something that would have brought a certain amount of joy to any other couple. They were at Mary's place one night, when she suggested they take a holiday.

"Why?"

"Well, you seem a bit glum, and we haven't taken a real trip together yet. It could be fun, get London out of our lungs for a while."

"Where on earth would I go on holiday?"

Mary shrugged as set went about putting plates back in the cabinets. "I was thinking somewhere warmer. I miss that Mediterranean climate, you know? Athens, maybe Rome. Someplace like that. Has to beat this English rain."

John scoffed, a bitter laugh. "No." He just managed to leave off the _fuck you_.

"Why not?"

He crossed his arms over his chest, stared up at her from his seat at her kitchen table. "Mary, you know goddamn well why I cannot go to Rome."

She set the plates down, leaned against the counter. "Seriously? You would seriously let that keep you from traveling? Is that why you won't get rid of that flat either?"

"Don't start this conversation, Mary, don't."

"John, you're letting your entire life be ruled by something that happened to you! Now obviously you didn't do that when you came back from Afghanistan or when you got through the Hickman, so it's baffling to me that you would do it now!"

"What makes you think I didn't do this when I got back from Afghanistan? Let me tell you, it is very easy to let your life be ruled by what happened to you when it was something like _that_."

"It's not healthy, John. I've lost friends too, but you have to get on with your life."

"Then what do you suggest I fucking do?"

"Anything! You'll go crazy if you just sit around here agonizing over it!"

"So how do I fix it?"

"Not everything can _be_ fixed, but you've got to at least try! Sometimes I think you enjoy being miserable. You will get on with life, you will find other friends who mean just as much to you, and god willing you'll be able to wake up one morning without automatically thinking about what happened to Sherlock Holmes."

He didn't even hesitate before standing and walking out of her flat, letting the door slam behind him.

... ... ...

The sadness he'd been able to handle – mostly. But he'd had no idea how to deal with the anger that had slowly risen in him more and more with every passing week, the cold rage that made him want to scream at the world. He wanted to hit someone, anyone would do, even a stranger who just pushed past him on the street. There had to be _some_ way to quit feeling so miserable and so goddamn angry.

The train ride cooled him down some, at least, enough for him to put his head in his hands and feel pathetic for even getting on the train in the first place. But he couldn't go back to Mary, and he couldn't bear the silence of the empty flat tonight. The train ride had been an impulse, one he was sure to pay for later, but he had no idea where else he could go where no one would ask him prying questions or tell him how sorry they were.

It was fairly late by the time he knocked on the door, and there was a long pause before he heard the locks turning on the other side. He would have checked to see who it was before opening the door, as any sensible person would when someone turns up on their doorstep at night, but he still looked surprised to see John standing there.

"Watson? You all right?"

"My head is killing me, I need a drink, and I am _not_ all right."

... ... ...

Sholto had gone around turning all the lights on, especially in the living room, which he lit up brightly enough that it felt like daytime despite the encroaching night outside. Before he'd even bothered with that, though, he handed John a glass and a bottle, without question. It had been so long since John had come to see him, back before Rome, and part of him felt guilty for showing up now for such a selfish reason. But Sholto didn't seem to notice. He acted like he'd seen John yesterday.

John sat down on the sofa and knocked back a whiskey in one gulp, and poured another. Eventually, Sholto sat down in the chair opposite him, not speaking, just watching him carefully like he was a human trip wire.

"You're not going to ask me why I'm here?" John asked, swallowing a significant portion of the second drink.

"I think I already know why you're here."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Okay, what's the theory?"

"I assume it has something to do with Rome. You haven't been round lately."

John could only stare at him. If it was obvious to Sholto, who else was it obvious to? He set the bottle down on the coffee table after refilling his glass yet again, and said, "I just came from Mary's."

"Who's Mary?"

"My girlfriend." Sholto didn't say anything to that, just settled back in his chair some, a passenger preparing for a long flight.

"I haven't heard about her."

"No, you wouldn't have. I met her after Rome, and unlike some people, she doesn't have much cause to show up in the news. She's a nurse at the clinic I used to work at."

"You don't work there anymore?"

"No, I quit a while back. Wasn't working for me very well."

"What have you been doing?"

John laughed. "Nothing, mostly. Getting by?"

Sholto shifted in his seat, tilting his head. "John, why did you leave your girlfriend to come out here?"

"Because I was arguing with her and couldn't be in the same room with her anymore."

He paused. "It's not like you."

"What?"

"To do something like this over a fight with a girlfriend. Anytime you argue with anyone you usually just brood for a few minutes and change the subject. If you're really angry, you might walk away for five or ten minutes to get some air, but you don't take a train ride out of the city over a fight with your girlfriend."

"Apparently it _is_ like me. Here I am."

"Are you happy? With her I mean? Mary?"

"Am I happy?"

"Aren't people who are in relationships with each other usually happy with each other?"

"Sure, I'm perfectly happy. She's a good person."

"So why are you so angry? What did she say that set you off?"

"It's the same fucking argument she's had with me a hundred times."

"About?"

"Rome, usually. Or some variation of it. The Hickman and Afghanistan make appearances sometimes."

"Is it hard for her? Being so close to someone who's been through all that?"

"No. In fact she's sort of cold about it, honestly. I don't think she's ever been through anything truly terrible in her entire life."

Sholto nodded, mulling it all over. He stood and crossed the room to the side table and got himself a glass, which he filled halfway before retaking his seat. When he took a drink it looked like moderation personified. He had never lost his cool on the battlefield, so he certainly wouldn't lose it now, even though John felt so wired that he thought he might snap at any second. Any calmness under pressure that he had once had was gone.

"Do you love this woman?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Your tone when you talk about her sounds hateful. What is it about your past that bothers her so much?"

"She says I should move on from everything, as if she would have any idea how hard that is. At least I can guarantee _you_ understand that much."

"Why does she want you to do that?"

"I don't know."

He set his glass down. "When I came back to England, a few months after the fact when my name wasn't in the papers all the time anymore, you know I dated this nice person for a while."

"No, I didn't know. I don't think you ever mentioned it."

"Well, anyway, it ended, unsurprisingly."

"Because they found out about what happened?"

"No. Because they felt that they were living under the shadow of it all. In fact, they had no idea about what happened in Afghanistan, they didn't know I was a common name in the news reports. All they knew was that something in the war had destroyed me from the inside out, and I could never pretend I was okay. Apparently it's difficult for someone to spend time with someone who is constantly reliving terrible things. People who haven't been in situations like ours, they don't know what to make of somebody living ruled by their own pasts. It puts a strain on things. This person told me that it felt like I was more attached to my own sadness than I was to them."

"That's a bit harsh."

"Probably. But it's also a bit correct. The only thing that people don't tend to realize is that people in our positions don't choose to be attached to our sadness. It's just a fact of life. You can't escape certain things."

"Then how do you ever find someone who won't walk out on you or have the same argument about it all a hundred times?"

"Ideally, I suppose, you would find someone just as strange or broken as you. Unfortunately, the world doesn't seem to have many people like that around."

"Strange _or_ broken?"

"Well, if they're broken, then they understand what it's like to live under the shadow of something. And if they're especially strange, then they won't care. Conventions don't matter to odd people, do they?"

"No, I suppose not." The drinks had begun to kick in, and for the first time in hours, John didn't feel ready to burst. The living room was quiet and felt insulated from the outside world. And Sholto had been unexpectedly talkative, and of all things, had clearly considered these same questions many times before. "Did you ever find anyone like that?"

"No. That first person, when they left, it made me realize a great many things. Mainly that the likelihood of strange and broken people finding someone else who can tolerate them is slim to none."

"You make it all sound rather hopeless."

"Some days it feels that way." He shrugged. "No sense in sugar-coating."

"Mary isn't strange or broken."

"She doesn't sound like it, no."

"Is she going to walk out, too?"

"I don't know. She seems to have hung around for a good while, if you've had this argument as many times as you say. She may very well be in it for the long haul."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"Why?"

"I think part of me is hoping she'll leave me and never look back, instead of trying to help and sticking around."

"For a relationship that you are supposedly happy in, you don't sound all that happy."

John stared at his hands, running a finger along the edge of his glass. "Do you know what happened? In Rome? Do you still keep up with the news? Tell me what you know about it so I know what blanks to fill in. Don't worry about sugar-coating."

Sholto hesitated, but finally said, "Well, I know that while you were working that case in Italy that that detective of yours got killed. Shot down, if I recall. I honestly don't really know much about the case itself, but I remember that he was killed."

"That's the only part that matters, anyway."

"So I gather."

John rubbed a hand over his eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. "I can't bounce back from this."

"That's what you said about Afghanistan, too, John."

"Yeah, but I didn't –"

Sholto waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, prompted him. "Yes?"

"All the men who died in Afghanistan were just men. We barely knew most of them. I didn't think I could bounce back from all that death, but it was mostly strangers' deaths, really. This wasn't a stranger's death. You're right. I'd thought I'd moved on, but Rome throws a shadow over everything with Mary."

"And everyone else, I imagine."

"No, mostly just with Mary."

"Hmm."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No, what is it?"

"Your word choice. You thought you'd _moved on_. From whom?"

John was used to silences with Sholto, but they were always comfortable silences. But not this one. "You think I was in love with him, don't you?"

"I think that when you _move on_ , that the new girlfriend or boyfriend can always tell when you're still in love with the person you supposedly moved on from."

"You think Mary thinks I was in love with him, too?"

"I don't know what Mary thinks. And I don't _think_ you were in love with him."

"You don't?"

"No. I _know_ you were." He didn't say it with any sort of malice or reprimand, but still John felt like a child who's been caught by a parent. Sholto watched him, his face stoic as always, never giving away a single bit of what he was thinking. "You're not arguing with me about that, though I'm sure you've argued with Mary about it often enough, whether you realize it or not."

"When did you decide you knew this?"

"Tonight."

"Why tonight?"

"You left your girlfriend to talk to me about how devastated you still were about Sherlock Holmes' death. If he'd just been a friend, I imagine you would have just stayed and found comfort in the woman you supposedly love. Instead you showed up on my doorstep needing a drink and barely able to get any words out and being quite obviously heartbroken about your loss. I can only think of one reason you wouldn't feel comfortable talking to Mary about all this."

John fell silent, turning to look out the large windows at the end of the room. But since Sholto had flooded the place with light, all he saw was a blurry sort of reflection of the room.

"Fine," he said, hating how tired he sounded.

"Sorry?"

"Fine. You're right. You usually are."

"In that case, I'm sorry. It's not a pain I'd wish on anyone."

"I'm tired."

"You can stay here tonight if you need to, this place has plenty of bedrooms."

"I mean I'm tired on a big scale. It's a nightmare getting through the day. And what the hell would I tell Mary? Christ, even if I did tell her she'd probably say something really fucking practical, like, You can't bring him back from the dead."

"Unfortunately, she would be correct."

"If anyone could cheat death, it would be him."

"He was still just human, John."

"Everything is just, well, dull by comparison after living with him so long. I don't know if I'm capable of a regular life. People talk about how extraordinary he was, and they're right. He really was extraordinary. His world wasn't like Mary's world, like everyone else's. I want _that_ world back."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I thought I'd be in a better place by now. And what the fuck am I going to do about Mary?" He rested his forehead on his open palm.

"I don't suppose honesty is an option on the table?"

"Can you imagine that conversation? Sorry our relationship isn't what it should be, Mary, it's just that I'm in love with my dead best friend still. Christ, maybe I'll luck out and she'll just break up with me."

"And then what? If she does, I mean?"

John shook his head, and didn't say what he wanted to, that he had trouble seeing his life far into the future. He always got like that when bad things happened. It seemed arrogant to presume he would survive very long, that to imagine himself being alive at sixty or even fifty seemed preposterous. So he kept things short term, fairly certain he could survive smaller intervals, even if the idea of surviving for longer than that was absurd. After Afghanistan he had lived only imagining a few weeks into the future. After the Hickman, a few days. Since Sherlock had been killed, he only allowed himself to see his life a few hours ahead. It was all just about getting through the next few hours, and then the next, and then the next.

And sometimes, it was only minutes.


	8. Kisses Falling Over Me Like Stars

**Kisses Falling Over Me Like Stars**

" _Makes a cathedral, him pressing against/me, his lips  
_ _at my neck, and yes, I do believe/his mouth is heaven,  
_ _his kisses falling over me like stars."_

Early in the morning was always the hardest time. If John could sleep through till daylight, he knew he was capable of surviving the rest of the day. But on nights where he would lie awake, or worse, be jarred from sleep in those early morning hours, he had a harder time believing in his own ability for survival. That gray time, that transition from night to dawn, was always the most crippling. Something about the way the light changed in how it cut through the curtains, or the way he could slowly hear the city coming to life outside his window, one car, one clanging metal gate slung up to open a shop, one person shouting to another on the street. It all felt too vivid and surreal to be a real time of day. The middle of the night carried with it a certain level of mystique that was always filled with possibility. And he could remember when the early gray morning brought the same feeling, along with a happy, comfortable exhaustion. But now it was an in-between time, a limbo, a question of could he make it through the real day, could he make it through another night. He would be allowed perhaps an hour in this liminal state before the light shifted to full morning and he was forced to face another day without the rest of his world.

The gray almost-morning was just the harsh reminder.

He and Mary had hardly spoken since John stormed out on her, and really, he didn't mind. She was one less person he had to pretend to be okay for, one less person to ask him all those nagging little day to day questions like _how are you_ or _what do you want for dinner tonight_ or _did you get enough sleep_. She'd sent him a few texts, mundane messages that didn't tell him whether or not she was still truly mad at him. But he couldn't force himself to care either way.

Sholto had been right.

John decided that in the wake of his late-night train ride collapse that he would keep to himself for a few days, try not to talk to anyone at all. Not Mary, not Sarah, not Mrs. Hudson, and certainly not Mycroft. Maybe a few days of peace and quiet, of tea and reading and solitude, would do him good. Or at least, it certainly couldn't make the situation worse.

He turned off his phone entirely.

... ... ...

John walked past the ruins of the Hickman like a superstitious child walking past a cemetery. Except it wasn't quite ruins anymore. It had been for ages, and John had glanced at the pictures of the wreckage in the papers. But they had begun rebuilding, trying to put the little gallery back together again, scaffolding climbing the walls and tarps flapping in the wind. He wasn't sure when they were planning on opening it again – surely months down the line – but John couldn't help but think that rebuilding at all implied a foolish sort of optimism that believed that the worst was over for the gallery, that the presumed destroyed Vermeer wouldn't come back to haunt them somehow in years to come. Given how things had gone for them, John couldn't make himself buy into the idea that something like it wouldn't happen again. Even with Moriarty dead, it still felt like every museum and gallery in the city was one step away from being threatened with terrorist demolition.

He was glad to see it disappear behind him as he walked away.

... ... ...

The museum he finally settled on was so untouched, so pristine and calm that he had to remind himself that not _all_ museums end up being blown to pieces.

 _No,_ he thought, _just ones that you're in_.

Some days he felt like that would be a welcome change, to be in one of his galleries like any other day, and then have it meet the same fate as the Hickman. But in these hypothetical bombings, he never lived through it like he had the first time. In these thoughts, the bombing would take him out too, the explosion and fire finally making all this bleak tedium go away.

His ex-therapist likely would have found plenty to say about that.

Today it was an impressionism exhibit, wall after wall of paintings that looked blurry and less real the closer you stood to them. But John had always stood far away from the art he'd come to see. Getting too close always warped your perspective, no matter how hard you attempted to resist it.

The Monet on the opposite wall was the antithesis of the Vermeer in John's closet. And really, it hardly felt like a Monet with its odd color scheme. It was of water lilies, of course, but the colors were on fire, painted during a sunset. Instead of Monet's usual rich blues and greens, or even his more broody blacks and grays that he used for cityscapes, the painting was a shock of warm colors in an otherwise cool room. The only hints of Monet's favorite lush color palette were in tiny dabs, bits of purple and green here or there, just enough to keep the sunset from being overpowering. It had no darkness to it, no cold city under even colder stars. And it had none of the baggage that the Vermeer lorded over him. Perhaps that was why he liked it so much, when the few scattered other patrons were drawn only to the most famous pieces.

"You never struck me as an impressionism person, really. I thought you were more suited to Sargent, or someone like him. Artists who paint people instead of places. You always did care more about the people than anything else."

John waited for the inevitable, the explosion that always followed. In these dreams, it was always him, always appearing in Baker Street or a museum, or even on the streets. It was always him, in the same dark coat with the same small smile on his face, always looking like a better work of art than any man could create. And it would always be destroyed in the flash of an instant, taken away in a brief, miserable fire that would set of the sounds of cannons in John's head and leave alone in his bed, awake and shaking and holding his head in his hands. Sometimes he would try to resist looking at him, but he rarely could. Even if it wasn't real, it was still seeing him again.

Better than nothing.

He wasn't looking at John, but at the Monet on the opposite wall, hands in his pockets, his face blank. It was rare for him to do that. Usually, John's subconscious could at least concoct a scenario where Sherlock would actually see him for a change. But maybe this was just another sign that even this small reprieve was fading, and would soon leave him entirely alone.

Except there was a deviation from the script. As the silence stretched on – John never spoke in these dreams – the museum remained untouched by fire and violence, and Sherlock continued to stare at the Monet, the rise and fall of his chest surely a deception.

"But then again, I suppose everyone appreciates Monet." The voice had weight to it, a rumble that would vibrate in his chest. Sherlock, startled by the brief noise, followed a family across the room with his eyes, an excited child bouncing alongside her parents. He gave the tiniest shake of his head. "Well, nearly everyone."

John's heart rate started speeding up. He'd never been aware of his heart in these dreams. He'd never heard his own breathing, never been able to count the number of people in the room and have it be the same twice, never been able to keep the same paintings on the walls (sometimes they were paintings that didn't even exist). He ran through all his tests, all the things he tried to remember that meant the dream was nearly over, that the explosion was imminent and would soon wake him up. But all the tests failed.

So not a dream. A hallucination? Couldn't be, since the woman who passed him on her way out of the room looked at him, smiled. Why smile at thin air?

John took a single step back, Sherlock finally turning his head toward him. No matter how long it took for John to look him up and down, to shake his head, to go through a hundred false starts, Sherlock remained silent, waiting on him.

"What the hell – what the _fuck_. You were dead!" He hushed himself, words coming out in a hiss to avoid them coming out in a scream in the cool silence.

"No, not dead. Had to be, for a while, but now it's safe."

Again he had to remind himself to keep his voice down. You couldn't just shout in a museum; that was part of what had appealed to him in the first place. " _Why_ did you do this, why _are_ you doing this?" He hated that his voice broke. Sherlock looked something like contrite, but John wasn't sure he bought the act.

"I had to, for you to be safe. I couldn't have taken down the rest of Moriarty's network if I was presumed alive. It would have put you at risk."

"I don't _care_ about being put at risk, I would be perfectly all right with it. I've put myself at risk hundreds of times running around with you!" He felt his fist clench up instinctively, a habit of nerves, not of anger.

"Not like this you haven't. This was another caliber, and while you may not care about putting your life on the line, I do, and I wasn't going to chance something awful happening to you."

"Something awful _did_ happen to me, Sherlock!" He lowered his voice, his last sharp words turning a couple of heads in the gallery. "I had to mourn you! I thought you were dead, and let me tell you, that was _fucking awful_." Sherlock hung his head, and for once, he actually looked _aware_ of what John would have believed was a foreign concept. "Did you pick a public place to do this so that I wouldn't beat the ever loving hell out of you?"

Sherlock looked back up at him, turning his whole body finally, genuine confusion on his face. "No. I thought that if you wanted to beat the hell out of me that badly that you would do it no matter the location. I picked this place because these museums were always stress free environments for you when other places might not have been." He shrugged one shoulder, not grasping the gravity of his own consideration. "By all means, punch the lights out of me if it will help, because I don't really know what _will_ help."

Exasperation, frustration, even rage. Part of him really did want to hurt him, violently attack him, art museum courtesy be damned, but mostly he didn't know what to do with the energy. He had been so perpetually exhausted without Sherlock that simply being in his presence again breathed life back into him. The world didn't feel as if it was shades of gray broken only by paintings. For once, everything was in focus, in color, _alive_. Even Sherlock himself, who always had about him a Gothic sort of feeling, appeared as vibrant and timeless as the Monet.

John felt like he could breathe again.

Sherlock watched him nervously, unsure what his eventual reaction would be. And as always, he could never take anything very seriously.

"Well, are you at least a little happy to see me?"

It broke him, and he couldn't help but laugh. It had been so long since laughter was an option that none of the logic that told him he should continue being enraged could beat out the sudden and intense joy that came with the realization _he is alive and he is here with me_.

"Yes, I'm happy to see you, I thought you were dead and you're not, yes I'm happy you callous fucking moron." Finally, Sherlock gave him a small, hesitant smile, wanting to tread lightly and having no idea how to do so in such a situation. "Come on. We're going back to Baker Street. This is not fucking over yet."

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, a text from Mary (who else?).

He ignored it.

... ... ...

The thing about Baker Street was that it only felt like it really existed if Sherlock Holmes was in it. Sure, it was home even in the terrible interim, but it could have been any flat, anywhere. But his return, heavenly and surreal, brought the light back to the building.

Mrs. Hudson had been informed before, so when the two of them arrived home, all was quiet. Sherlock said that she had screamed, but was glad he was back, and that Henry had been especially glad to see him.

John wondered if he felt like a stranger in his own house from the way he stood carefully, like a guest trying to avoid bumping into expensive furniture. What sort of conditions had he lived in while he was dead? Had he even had a home to come back to at the end of the night? Or had his life reverted to his childhood, always in a different place, always starting over, always wishing to have a stationary bedroom that he could afford to make his own? John caught him out of the corner of his eye, running his hand along the bannister of the stairs lovingly, always smiling until he looked at John, at which point he wore what John could only describe as a hint of fear. He was a dog waiting to be kicked.

But as much as John tried to summon up some rage, some disappointment, some sort of harsh words, he failed miserably. All he could think about was that first time they'd stopped here in this front hall, leaning against the wall, breathless, and how he'd never felt so alive before in his entire life.

Upstairs, Sherlock hung his coat in the same place, walked across the room as if he had been in it yesterday.

"You left everything where it was."

John stood by his chair, watching as Sherlock glanced over the tabletops and bookshelves, all the little oddities still firmly in their places, right down to the skull on the mantlepiece.

"I wasn't sure what else to do."

"Someone dies, you don't keep their home exactly as they left it. You throw things out and rearrange the furniture."

"I couldn't. Your room is still yours, too."

"You stayed upstairs?"

"Yeah. On the nights I slept at all."

"Preserving everything was unnecessary."

"I know."

Sherlock looked nervous suddenly, uncertain, an expression which seemed so unlike him, even though the reality was that Sherlock was unsure of things quite often. It just rarely made it to the papers. But John had watched him stay awake all night wracking his brain for answers before collapsing in frustration at the most ungodly hours, still hell bent on solving the problem as soon as he woke up again.

Sherlock settled into his old chair, still acting like a house guest. John hadn't even moved the chair an inch. He had considered sitting in it himself now and then, but it felt like a violation, like kicking someone's tombstone. Besides, it suited Sherlock better anyway. All John could do was to take his usual seat as well.

He listened as Sherlock told him about taking down the network, about living in hiding with only his brother aware of his travels, about the sleepless nights and little victories, the web that took so long to destroy.

"I thought you were dead, Sherlock," John said quietly. "It was the most miserable thing I've ever dealt with. I'm glad you're back, really, but you nearly killed me."

"There would have been no _nearly_ had I stayed alive, and I couldn't have lived with myself if something had gone wrong." A heavy pause, and Sherlock sitting there like a work of art, simultaneously understanding everything and nothing. "I understand if you never want to see my face again, I really do."

"No." He shook his head, feeling suddenly tired. "No, I'd like to continue seeing your face. Please keep being in Baker Street. Please keep being alive. I thought I was dreaming, you know? Or hallucinating. I was questioning whether you were real of if my brain just concocted you from nothing to placate me."

"I'm real."

"I know. Trust me, I know."

It hung there between them, all they weren't saying, the elephant in the room that was that fevered kiss in Rome. Both of them were pretending like it had never happened, but both of them were painfully aware that it couldn't be avoided indefinitely.

When Sherlock had been dead, as with the aftermath of Afghanistan and the Hickman, John had gotten used to the very familiar numbing pain. It was the kind of pain that assaulted you so constantly that eventually it felt normal, an emptiness, a hollowing, usually coupled with the sort of sedation that comes with barely being able to force yourself out of bed in the morning. John was in pain even now, but it was no longer the anesthetizing stillness. This instead was a hot pain, a direct cut, a bleeding wound, sharp and jarring. But it was far better than all those years of anesthesia. It was something new and agonizing in its own way, but it was a pain he was more than willing to live with for the rest of his life. It was the difference between being buried in the ground, trapped in cold solitude, or being set on fire and lighting the world.

Who knew what Sherlock was feeling, if anything at all. Maybe he had locked up the human part of himself for a while, to get through his work. But he couldn't get rid of it entirely. John had seen it too many times, and somewhere behind his composure, John was sure he was at least half as much a mess as John himself.

Every _I'm glad you're back_ , every _I missed you_ , every _I'm glad you're safe_ , every _you idiot_. All these little words and phrases stayed floating in the space between them like stars, and with every admission, their voices softened, and John knew he could never stay angry at Sherlock Holmes.

But still, they didn't address the issue.

"How's Mary?"

"You know about Mary?"

"Mycroft kept tabs on you."

"Of course he did. Fine, she's – she's fine." He searched for more to say about her, and came up empty.

"That's good. I'm happy for you."

John rubbed his hands over his face, leaning forward in his seat to rest his elbows on his knees. "Christ, don't be happy for me, I'm fucking miserable."

"Why? She seems like a perfectly nice woman."

"Yeah, well, she's not you, though, is she? I don't think I know what to do with perfectly nice."

"From what I've learned, people tend to prefer perfectly nice to me."

"Those people haven't lived with you." Sherlock opened his mouth, likely to dispute. "Don't." John held a hand up and Sherlock fell silent, looking so small in the few feet of distance between them. "What are we going to do about this?"

"About what?"

"You just came back from the dead, Sherlock."

"Well, that seems rather clear-cut to me."

"What are we going to do about Rome?"

It had taken all the nerve he had to just say that. John knew what to do about the faked death. Sherlock was, and often still is, a complete bastard, but he had done what he did for a good reason. Simple. But the streets of Rome were not so easily explained away.

"What about Rome?" Sherlock repeated. John only nodded. Sherlock cut his eyes away, tracing a finger along the arm rest of his chair. "While I was relatively certain that I wouldn't end up actually dying while closing Moriarty's network, I wasn't one hundred percent sure. That kind of certainty is never smart, and I'm not one for absolutes."

John paused, waiting to see if he would say more, but he didn't. "So Rome was what? In case you died or never saw me again or something?" Sherlock only shrugged, a familiar gesture that translated most closely to _obviously_.

A deathbed act, an admission that should have been whispered in a hotel room with the night breeze coming through the curtains. A moment that should have only been touched by early morning calm. A point of no return that should have been passed that first night in the church.

"Okay. But you didn't die. You're here again. So now what?" Sherlock always had a plan, always knew what the next step was, accounted for every possible outcome. So what had been on his list on the off chance he survived?

"Honestly, I thought I would be lucky if you let me speak to you at all and let me get some of my things before throwing me to the street."

"Jesus, Sherlock, you know I couldn't do something like that."

"Well this is better than what I planned for, so I have no idea what comes next."

"Can I ask you something? And have you actually answer?"

Sherlock tilted his head back ever so slightly, wary. "All right."

"That stunt you pulled, in the alley in Rome. How long had you wanted to do that?"

If John hadn't known better, he would have called the expression on Sherlock's face _heartbroken_.

"Since always."

All those times where John kept his mouth shut out of fear, they were all quick assumptions. He was the first to admit when he was wrong about something, but usually his wrongs were small, facts and details. He had never been guilty of such a massive blindness before.

"Why did you wait so long?"

"I wasn't prepared to compromise what I already had."

"What? You thought I would leave? Not speak to you again?"

"It was a possibility. By Rome, as far as I knew, I was on a death mission. It was unlikely that there would have been any consequences."

"But before then?"

He paused, trying to cover up what John imagined was an innate awkwardness. "Well. I couldn't be certain about your reaction, could I?"

"You really are a bit clueless, aren't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I would _never_ have pushed you away. I would never have stopped you."

"Since when?"

John laughed. "Always? Hell, I almost just said _fuck it_ , that night in the church."

"Then why –"

"Because you're Sherlock Holmes. I figured you were immune to anything as human as that. Though I did have my doubts. But I always said I was deluding myself, seeing things that weren't actually there. I had no idea..." He trailed off, knowing there were not enough words to truly explain how unlikely he'd always believed this was.

"For what it's worth, I'd never have pushed you away, either."

"Really."

"Really. You're the only person I've ever encountered who was worth paying any attention to."

"I suppose that's a high compliment coming from you."

"It is. All I've ever wanted was to make sure that as little harm as possible came to you because of me."

"Trust me, all you've really done in the long run is make my life a hell of a lot better than it was before. The only way you've ever harmed me was being dead. And you're not dead. Not anymore."

"No."

John had always looked at works of art from a safe distance, no way of marring them or obscuring them. But Sherlock wasn't a painting or statue. He was a work of art that didn't have to be appreciated only from a safe distance. There was no rule in place that prevented him from being touched. Finally, a work of art he could touch like a painter making brushstrokes on canvas.

John stood and crossed the room without thinking, leaning one open hand on the arm rest of Sherlock's chair. He stared down at him, at his questioning face, and was filled with a sudden, irrepressible joy that there was no longer a need to stay safely on the other side of the gallery.

The kiss was the epitome of _this is how it is supposed to be_. Not in the middle of a crisis in Rome, but in their flat with no intruding police lights and sirens, no shouting human voices, nothing but a pristine silence that almost had its own sound. John had never noticed that silence until they both gave up speaking, and while he was aware of it now, he was more aware of his hands on Sherlock's jaw and how alive Sherlock felt with his breath catching, the hesitance and hint of fear that emanated from him. This privacy that they had always wanted and never had that was more perfect than John could ever have imagined. He felt like it must be a dream, because people only get everything they want in dreams, but no, it was real and divine and he was so filled with love that his chest ached, and he didn't even entertain the thought that Sherlock might not feel the same way. Because he knew he did. He could tell. He could find his evidence in the catching breath and the fingers that reached out to his hand and how he leaned forward in his seat like he wanted no space between them, like a person who put their face underwater, not caring if they'd drown.

It was the meaning of the word _worship_ , how he wanted to drink him in. And he thought in terms of having discovered heaven, imagining a field of golden stars above them even though Baker Street had no constellations on its ceiling.

When John pulled away, he did so only as much as was necessary to speak. All he could say was, "I would _never_ push you away."

Sherlock stared up at him like he'd never heard anything like that before, and it struck John that he probably hadn't.

There was no way this man was a dream, not when he was warm and alive and right there and wanting him. And John could think of nothing except how much he loved him. To hell with Mary and a house in the suburbs and a stable clinic job. Who could ever want any of that when there was _this_ instead, when there was adventure and heartache and redemption and art come to life and all his wildest dreams realized at last in reality.

Sherlock's face simultaneously wore both fear and elation, and had he been anyone else there would have been tears in his eyes. John was suddenly aware of how Sherlock's life had really just been one long lonely night after the next; no wonder he had no idea what to make of happy endings like the stories promised to every child except him. Sherlock kept glancing at John's lips, awestruck that anyone would do something like cross a room to kiss him and knowing that those lips were on his and could be for years to come. Unprecedented, all of this. It was no wonder that so many people went around going on and on about love and happy endings and all the things that Sherlock always disdainfully called cliches.

Religious people really didn't know the meaning of salvation. _This_ was salvation, this awestruck love.

When Sherlock moved to stand from his chair, still so close since John didn't back away, their bodies nearly flush together, he looked down at him like John was something breakable, something that he had to be careful with if he dared to touch it.

His words nearly had a stammer to them, a taught line of nerves underneath them.

"I didn't plan for this. I didn't think anything like this would happen and I have no idea what to do from here, I never planned this far and –"

John could only find it endearing, and smiled at him, all the while running a hand across his cheek, his other reaching blindly for Sherlock's hand, any shred of open skin. He never wanted to take his hands away.

Sherlock stared down at the small space between them.

"John, there's something I should say, I – I've meant to say always, and then never have."

He didn't let him finish. Instead he just trailed a line of kisses along his jaw and said in a hushed voice, "I know. I know."

It was Sherlock's bedroom, simply because it was the closest. Somewhere along the line, thought was suspended entirely, beaten out by a state where words were superfluous, where all that mattered was feeling and touch, like blind men learning braille for the first time. Every indentation of the skin, every hollow beneath a collarbone, every line etched on the canvas from scars and missteps, all of it was a book that neither of them had had the courage to read until now. And every last inch of skin told a story about them, the only story that had ever mattered. John thought he could be lost for years in the pages of Sherlock's heart and never miss the rest of the world for a second. There could be nothing more like heaven than Sherlock responding to every touch, being just as lost and undone as John, being so desperate and hesitant and always eradicating any space between them.

Of course he let John be the initiator, but John didn't mind. And even though he thought it was probably the blind leading the blind, all he wanted was for Sherlock to not worry for once, to let himself be worshiped. Because plenty of people flattered him, but no one had ever been allowed this close, never close enough for any sort of loving touch. And what on earth could be more satisfying than this?

Their world became a blur of lips on skin and a sense of being exposed and not minding, and Sherlock more vulnerable than John had ever thought possible. John wanted nothing except to devour him and feel every electric touch sing on Sherlock's skin. And while John had always considered his name very ordinary, it didn't sound that way when pulled from Sherlock's lips.

How had they ever made it this long without this happening? Without throwing off the pretenses and crashing into each other in a mix of shyness and unconcealed desire? And if it had all been so overwhelming for John, what was this like for Sherlock, a man who spent his entire life keeping his heart behind glass and his body safely cordoned off from the rest of the world like a museum piece? For someone who always spoke with a sort of disdain about the physical, who said his body was only transport?

The only word Sherlock could manage was John's name, over and over, sometimes catching in his throat, sometimes a plea, sometimes a prayer, and sometimes just love wrapped up in one word.

Of course, all John could manage was a chorus of, " _God you're beautiful, god I love you_ ," and he didn't even care about the implications or what people might say. Because it was true. He had never loved anyone like this, and his life had suddenly become a case of all this and heaven too.

John kept waiting for the logical part of Sherlock to kick in, to question all of this, but it never did; Sherlock was far too undone for that. And John thought that this was what people meant when they talked about something being a masterpiece, this skin on skin and lips and hands shaking as they reached out for you, and the rest of the world melting away where all you could think about was the body flush with yours, and gasps and sighs and the feeling that it never had to end. There was no better taste than his skin, no better stars than his eyes, and no better art than his hands on John's back, holding them close to each other.

John never wanted to leave him, this room, this bed. Hour after hour of closeness and laughter, of unafraid smiles and heartwrenching beauty. Things had never been like this with Mary, or any of the other women he'd tried to date, and he questioned whether he had ever loved anyone before at all, if all those other relationships had just been flights of fancy, simply training him, giving him points of comparison he could use down the line after meeting the great love of his life.

It certainly seemed that way.

Who knew where the night went, because before they knew it, it had reached that gray transition from night to dawn. Just yesterday these early morning hours had been a taunt, a cruel reminder, one last moment of unforgiving quiet before trying to survive the day. But this was the easiest early morning he could ever ask for, curled up next to someone he loved who loved him, half asleep and happier than he ever dreamed he'd be.

He wondered briefly if he'd left his phone in the living room, thinking that if anyone was trying to reach him that they would have no luck. He had no intention of leaving this bed anytime soon, no plan for being more than arm's length away from the sleeping man beside him. This was heaven, this was shelter, this was comfort. And as he fell asleep, finally resting untouched from awful dreams, he thought that _this_ , this was something close to peace.


	9. Hello Darling, Welcome Home

**Hello Darling, Welcome Home**

" _The names of flowers that open only once,/shouted from  
balconies, shouted from rooftops,/or muffled by pillows, or  
whispered in sleep.../I try, I do. I try and try. A happy  
ending?/Sure enough – _Hello darling, welcome home. _"_

They didn't speak to anyone for days. Instead they stayed in, ordering whatever food could be delivered to their door, spending hours just making up for lost time. The two of them could sit silently on the sofa with the television on in the background, and somehow that felt like all they needed. In the end, it had been so _easy_. John had spent so long running through things in his head, emotional crises and confrontations, fighting tooth and nail every step of the way to make things work, and it had turned out to be completely unnecessary. All it had really taken was that first step. After that, things fell into place so easily that John wondered why he ever worried about it in the first place.

Even Sherlock, with his self-loathing and uncertainty, didn't seem the slightest bit unnerved or concerned. Unlike John, he had never even run through the possible outcomes in his mind, since he believed it all to be so unattainable.

Finally everything was the way it was supposed to be, the way it should have been within a week of them meeting each other. Everything was obvious in retrospect.

Sherlock was the first to venture out of Baker Street, obligations with his brother. Soon the news would break, if it hadn't already, that Sherlock was back from the dead. The only reason it didn't break immediately was because Sherlock stayed off the map for a while, tucked away into his bedroom with John. Soon there would be no quiet. There would be cases again, and well-wishers, and people who wanted to curse them for all the pain they'd caused. But they relished in that last hour before Sherlock went to meet Mycroft.

John stayed in bed for a while after he left, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. A sense of the surreal crept over him, and he smiled to himself, the happy ache still deep in his chest and the comforting fact that Sherlock would come back, not vanish into death, made him nearly sigh in relief.

The front bell rang, and John shut his eyes, pretending he'd heard nothing, waiting to hear Mrs. Hudson's footsteps in the hall downstairs, answering it for him. But the guest continued to ring, and their call continued to go unanswered. John pushed himself out of bed, wondering if Mrs. Hudson had gone out, and pulled on his clothes, sure that he still looked like someone who had just woken up, or more accurately, someone who had spent most of the night wide awake and well-occupied.

He ran a hand back through his hair as he walked downstairs, annoyed already with the persistent visitor.

As soon as he opened the door, he wished he hadn't.

Mary stood on his front step, arms crossed over her chest and rage barely concealed as irritation on her face.

"Jesus."

"Jesus? Seriously? You fall off the face of the earth for days, don't answer any of your calls or texts, and all you can say is _Jesus_?"

"It's a long story."

"I've got all day."

John stood there for a moment, hand on the door frame, an unconscious block. He had to force himself to step aside and let her in.

Mary felt immediately wrong here. Baker Street should have been untouched by her outside influence, and the way she ran her eyes over the walls and staircase, like an appraiser before a demolition order. The look on her face made John want to shove her back out the door.

"I've never actually been inside. I don't even know my way around."

"Can't get lost here." He gestured for her to go upstairs after briefly but seriously considering taking her back to Mrs. Hudson's kitchen to keep her away from his flat.

She looked at the Baker Street living room searching for answers, and John realized that she really knew nothing about his life here, by the way she looked confused at the skull wearing headphones and the beakers in the kitchen and the mismatched furniture. What did all that look like to an outside observer?

John crossed the room, shutting the open bedroom door, knowing that the last thing he needed was her wandering leading her in there, which would be instant incrimination. Besides, as far as she knew that was just his bedroom, since she was unaware that he spent most of his years upstairs. She didn't seen to notice this move of his, still taking in the living room as she was.

"I always wondered what sort of place this was, from how little you talked about it. I didn't realize your decorative tastes were so odd."

"Honestly, very little of it was originally mine."

"Sherlock's?"

"Do you really think I'm the type of person to have an animal skull mounted on the wall?"

"Why did you leave it up?"

"I got used to it."

"So I still don't really know what your tastes are, then."

"Sorry to disappoint." John sat down in his chair, growing steadily more and more annoyed and jittery with her standing in the middle of the room.

"Where do you sleep? Or do you even sleep anymore?"

"I have a bedroom."

"Can I see?"

"It's not worth seeing."

"This is the first time I've ever been in your place, and you seem really reluctant to show me any of it."

John just held his hands out, palms up. He could think of nothing to tell her. Mary just shook her head and sat in the wooden chair at the table, and John thanked god she hadn't chosen Sherlock's seat.

"So where the fuck have you been? Why weren't you returning any of my messages?"

"I didn't realize it would upset you that much."

"John! You're a traumatized war veteran who suddenly disappears from the face of the earth and no one can contact you? You could have been _dead_."

"Your first thought was that I was dead?"

She threw up her hands. "What did you expect? You could have been on a bloody operating table for all I knew. Since you wouldn't fucking answer me."

"I'm not sure where my phone is, exactly, now that you mention it. I haven't picked it up for days."

" _I noticed_."

"Have you heard the news? Or is it even on the news yet?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" John could almost see the headache begin, the tense little unconscious gesture she made, fingers at her temple. "What news?"

"He's not dead."

"Who?"

"Sherlock. He's alive."

She visibly lost the urge to throw around curse words and have shouting matches for a moment. Instead, she was stilled and gaping at him in disbelief. When she finally broke the silence, she said quietly, "Are you kidding me?"

"No. He's alive. The news will probably break today, if I had to guess."

"He was gunned down in the street."

"No. He wasn't." John couldn't keep the smile off his face. "He literally came back from the dead."

She sat back in her seat some. "John, are you starting to see and hear things that aren't there? Do I need to get you some proper help?"

"No. I swear to god. I'm not joking, and I'm not hallucinating, although I wasn't sure myself at first."

"I'm not sure I believe you."

John paused, trying to come up with a way to prove it. But he couldn't find his phone to text Sherlock, and any other method of proof available in this flat would likely complicate the situation further.

"You will, trust me."

"So you didn't say anything to me for days because Sherlock Holmes is alive. Why did you wait to tell me that your best friend was back from the dead? Didn't you think that was information worth sharing?"

"I got caught up. I was busy."

"With what?"

"Mary, someone comes back from the dead and it sort of derails any plans you had for dinner and a movie."

"You can be a real bastard you know? How many men out there require the return of their dead friend for their girlfriend to see their flat?"

"It's not that exciting."

"So what? Is this his flat again? Are you moving out? Or moving in with me?"

"No, I'd just planned on staying."

"What about him?"

"I guess he's taking his room again."

"Doesn't any of this seem a little odd to you?"

"My threshold for odd is a bit higher than yours."

The same little gesture, hand at her temple. "So what are we going to do about this?"

"About what?"

"I'm assuming you're going to go back to your cases even though it nearly got the both of you killed? What, just revert to pre-Rome living?"

"What else would I do?"

"John, I didn't exist in pre-Rome living. I still haven't even met this man."

John wanted her out of there, didn't want her to ever meet Sherlock. He wanted this untainted, untouched, never sullied by her presence in these rooms. All he could think of was the quickest way to make her leave so he could catch a few hours of light sleep in their bed.

He instantly caught himself using the plural instead of the singular, and briefly thought that he should tell Mrs. Hudson she could rent out the upstairs bedroom. It must have brought a smile to his face, because Mary snapped in front of him. "Hey!"

John glanced back up at her, annoyance returning. Logically he knew that anyone would be angry in her position. But still he wanted to lead her to the door and not speak to her for a while. It was problematic. She was a decent person, really didn't deserve to be caught in the Sherlock Holmes fallout, and John probably _did_ owe her some sort of good explanation or apology, but all he could think about was how wrong she felt here, how obviously out of place and off her presence was. She was never meant for Baker Street.

"So now that he's back, will I get to see you a bit, now that the shock's worn off?"

"Honestly, Mary, I'm going to need a little bit of time."

"Excuse me?"

"Look, this wasn't something I ever planned for, and I'm just going to need some time to sort all this out. So you might not see me much at all. All of this was something I thought I'd moved on from, but I haven't."

"You talk about him like _he's_ the one you're in a relationship with. Doesn't that seem a little screwed up to you?"

"Well I –" He stopped, the sound of the door slamming shut downstairs. Mrs. Hudson never slammed doors.

Mary caught his eye, a sort of smug, vindictive smile coming across her face. She was already on her feet when he walked in the door, and stood between the two of them, grinning at him in a fashion that she clearly hoped passed for pleasant.

"So. The famous Sherlock Holmes. High time I actually met you."

... ... ...

Mary overstayed her welcome very quickly, chatting with Sherlock as if they were old friends, and Sherlock was either genuinely happy to meet her or played the part well enough that she believed it. John mostly tried to stay out of the way and prayed to god that she didn't ask any questions they couldn't answer. Perhaps ironically, Mary seemed quite fond of Sherlock, and certainly looked on him with more generosity than she had with John all morning. John couldn't help but wonder if Mary was aware of the elephant in the room, the great unspoken from behind closed doors, and the more he thought about it the more he agonized over what he would eventually have to tell Mary.

 _I can't date you anymore because he's alive. I don't know if you call what we have a relationship, since he doesn't really do that sort of thing as far as I know, but whatever_ this _is, it's definitely going to throw a wrench in me dating you._

 _I need some time and space because I have to figure out what to tell you, not because I need some time to decide. Because I already decided a long time ago, and if I have to choose, I'm choosing him._

 _We have to break up, that's what I really mean when I say I need time._

 _I've spent my entire life in compulsory placeholder relationships, and didn't even realize that was the case before him._

 _I don't think I can love you the way you want me to._

 _Sorry, but I'm in love with my best friend, and I don't see that changing any time soon._

None of his explanations sounded like anything he could actually say out loud to her.

He wondered what it would take to solve all of this without actually _telling_ her anything, without having to deal with that seemingly inevitable confrontation, without having to deal with her reaction. He wasn't sure what that reaction would even be. All he knew was that he wanted to avoid it. There was no need to answer questions, no need to get into a long conversation that had no chance of changing his mind, no need to deal with whatever cheap shots she might come up with as they fought.

Sherlock navigated conversation with her so easily, more easily than John did, if he was being honest. He couldn't imagine the acts Sherlock had had to play over the years, but it had paid off, especially since he seemed about as eager to start that conversation as John. The very thought of having that big emotional stand with Mary while all three of them were in the same room was unbearable and exhausting.

When she left – _finally_ – John just stood helplessly in the middle of his living room.

"She's nice. I can see why you would like her," Sherlock said from his place by the window, watching Mary walking down the pavement. "Why you'd be in a relationship with her."

"I wonder if she realizes I'm no longer in a relationship with her," he said, more to himself than to Sherlock.

"Probably not. Although she seems smarter than many, so I won't discount that possibility entirely."

"I have no idea what to do. I know what will happen, it's just a matter of when and how."

"Then don't dwell on it. Let it sit for a while. It doesn't look like Mary's going anywhere either way."

"Oh, she will though. I'll just be glad if she doesn't throw something at me."

"You don't have to involve yourself in all this, you know. If it makes things unnecessarily complicated for you." John looked up from the carpet and saw Sherlock absently fidgeting with a loose string on the curtain.

It was easier to reassure him with actions rather than words.

... ... ...

Things settled into something like stability over the following days. Mary made frequent appearances, much to John's chagrin, and she always made such a clear effort to be pleasant that it sometimes made John want to shout at her to make her leave. But he still didn't know what to say, and wasn't entirely sure that telling her the truth would keep her from coming round to see them, anyway.

That weekend, Sherlock told him he had loose ends to tie up, and John took the opportunity to gain some distance from London, and so set off on the train with a bottle of whiskey in tow.

Sholto's house stood silent and vaguely haunted as always, but there was a second car in the driveway, which John immediately attributed to a hired hand that had yet to quit out of misplaced moral outrage.

But the man who opened the door didn't look a thing like any cook, driver, or maid that John had ever seen. In fact, he looked like any salt-of-the-earth type that one could find in well-meaning small towns all over the country, dark hair and bright eyes and an ease of motion that made him seem fluid and soothing.

The man didn't even speak to John before shouting over his shoulder, "James! Someone to see you!" He turned back to John and grinned. "Come on in, he'll be down in a minute. What's your name?"

It took John far longer than it should have to step inside and respond.

"John Watson."

A change came over the man's face, something like awe. "Oh my god. I know who you are." John waited for the inevitable association with Sherlock. He had grown used to his name being tacked on in all the stories about Sherlock's victories, and though it didn't happen every day, there were always people who read the news stories closely enough that they had heard of him. "James has talked about you a lot. He speaks so highly of you. Christ, I owe you one."

"Sorry?"

"Hold on." He held up a finger, motioned for John to follow him to the familiar living room. The man sat down on the sofa, leaning across the coffee table to talk to John in a lower voice. "Honestly, I really do owe you. James might not have made it without you."

John set the whiskey bottle on the table. "Elaborate? Start with a name, maybe?"

"Sorry, I probably sound a little mad. I'm Felix," he reached out to shake John's hand. "I'd never have met James if you hadn't basically forced him to stay alive."

"Where on earth did you meet him? He hardly ever leaves the house."

"A cemetery."

"What?" John asked after a long pause.

Felix sat back in his seat, growing calmer, less bubbly. "My brother died, years ago. But I still go put flowers on his grave fairly often. And I kept seeing him at another grave. There weren't usually a lot of other people out there – I went early in the morning specifically to avoid any crowds after funerals, things like that – but he always was. Could set a watch by him after a while. One day I just decided to talk to him, asked if the guy whose grave he was in front of was a brother, son, whatever. And he just said, 'No, a soldier.' And when I asked him more, he seemed surprised that I didn't know who he was."

"He was all over the papers for what felt like forever."

"That's what he said. And he didn't seem to mind telling me _why_ , which I thought was strange."

"He probably figured it was quicker, rather than you ending up his friend and then hating him." Felix nodded. "And you didn't? Hate him, I mean?"

"You seem about as surprised by that as he did."

"I'm used to it, unfortunately. He's never been able to keep anyone around long, even staff."

"I couldn't hate him. He was in so much pain for something that was ultimately an accidental tragedy. You were with him overseas. I doubt people hate you for the people you've killed. Or any other soldier for that matter. Everyone's okay with hating people for random tragedies even though we've sent thousands of people to war to kill."

John waited for the punchline, the horrible twist that would group this man with all the other people who had passed through this house, but it never came.

"You've stayed."

"Yeah. Owe it to you, though. I really do believe he wouldn't have made it otherwise, since you were the only person on earth who didn't think he was a monster."

John had always believed his small comfort to be inadequate, to be palliative care instead of anything substantial or useful. He added this new information to the list of absurdities that his life had become in recent weeks.

"Thank you. For helping keep him alive, for standing by him, for coming to see him, because lord knows he didn't have anyone else."

"He does now, though."

Felix just smiled. "Brings his ally count up to two, at least."

"Hello, Watson." Who knew how long Sholto had been standing silently in the doorway, who knew what all he'd heard. But John was struck immediately by the lightness with which he carried himself, rather than looking like a man taking his last steps before falling over dead. Subdued still, yes, as always, but happier. "You're looking better than when I last saw you."

John picked up the bottle of whiskey. "To replace it from last time." He glanced over at Felix, "I'm afraid I went through a great deal of alcohol the last time I was here." Sholto grinned to himself, picked up a few glasses from the side table, and brought them over, sitting in neutral territory between the two of them.

"Definitely looking better than that night."

"Same to you."

John saw Felix's eyes cut to Sholto in his peripheral vision, a smile pulling at the edge of his mouth.

"How are things, Watson?"

"Have you seen the news?"

"I can never get him to watch the news nowadays, unfortunately," Felix said. "He lives with blinders on."

"Well," John said, unsure how any of it would sound to an outsider. "He's alive."

"Who?" Sholto frowned, and John could see him running through a mental list of every human being John had ever mentioned in conversation with him.

"Sherlock. He's alive."

John couldn't decide what the look on Sholto's face meant. It was either general shock or some sort of concern that John had gone completely insane and had become delusional.

"Wait. Sherlock Holmes?" Felix was positively delighted, oblivious to Sholto's wary concern.

"Yeah."

"Oh my god, you're the blogger, the one who's always with him."

"Guilty as charged."

"I remember seeing in the news, about how he managed to survive. I couldn't believe it at first."

Sholto said quietly, "For real?"

"Yeah. For real." John smiled, an involuntary action that had grown more and more common in association with his continuing realization about his miracle.

Sholto paused, the analyzing expression momentarily taking John back to the front lines. It was the same look he would use as he went over mission plans. "And how is that?"

"Baker Street feels like home again."

Felix looked between the two of them, and John was painfully aware that he knew what he was _really_ saying, that he was successfully reading in between the lines. Just as Felix had never once explicitly said, "I am in a relationship with James Sholto," John had never once explicitly said, "The love of my life came back from the dead." But neither of them had needed to.

Sholto had never looked at John with as much kindness as he had in that moment. He had seen him at his lowest point, and for once his life was in a good enough state that he could be happy for John without thinking in the back of his head _my life will never be like that_.

When he left, late into the night and after food and drinks with the two of them, Sholto walked him out, and John could no longer keep quiet.

"You said to me, a long time ago, that the hero should never have to be alone at the end of the day."

"And you're not, now. In fact, I imagine you look forward to going home."

"Yeah, but that's not what I mean, James. You're not alone at the end of the day anymore either."

"And?"

"Well, I always said you weren't the villain in the story. I don't think you ever believed me."

"I don't know that I believe you now."

"Sherlock would say that all the evidence confirms my theory. He values evidence very highly."

"And he's almost never wrong, as I understand."

"Right."

"Then I guess I have to agree with you, don't I?"

"It's for the best."

He laughed. "I know better than to argue with you, Watson. But in all seriousness, I'm very happy for you. People are lucky enough to find someone they would want to be with, but to lose that person and have them come back from death itself? Things like that don't happen to everyone."

"I know."

"Do you mind me asking, but what did Mary have to say about this? Or did the two of you split before then?"

"I haven't told her yet. I think she knows we aren't together anymore, but she doesn't _know_."

"Why not?"

"I don't know what to tell her."

"As someone whose life is already as public as yours? I'd recommend the truth."

"She'll hate me for it, James."

"Maybe not. And even if she does, whose good favor would you rather have? Hers, or his?"

John gave a resigned sigh, staring at the gravel beneath his feet. "His."

"Then why are you concerned with what she'll think?" John just shook his head. Sholto clapped him on the shoulder. "Go home, Watson. Keep in mind: if things can work out for someone like me, then certainly things will work out for you."

John almost believed him.

... ... ...

During the ride home, John sat with his head leaning against the glass, watching the world race by outside, occasional points of light from houses and towns, but otherwise nothing. There were few other people on this late train with him, and all of them too deeply preoccupied to notice him. Now and then the interior lights would trick his eyes, and he would be conscious of his own reflection in the window. His thoughts should have been happier than they were. But all he could do was agonize over his situation, despite the thoughts in the back of his head that were nothing but happiness both for himself and for one of his oldest friends.

But he still felt like he had no clue what to do about all this.

He let his thoughts wander, hoping he'd unintentionally stumble onto something more pleasant. And to his surprise, he did: Sherlock would likely be home by the time he was. The little thought, that he would be there, was more than enough to keep John happy on the ride home. It was so easy to think of nothing else, nothing except how Baker Street was alive again, alive with his voice, his quiet movements as he went about the day-to-day, the slight disturbance of the air around him when the belt of his dressing gown cut through it. More lazy mornings and nights of cases and takeout, and everything being worth the trouble and pain.

Seeing Sholto, the man destined for sadness and solitude, so happy made him ask himself why the hell he was waiting. Granted, he didn't see himself making any kind of statement to Lestrade and his crew, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson were both already well aware of the situation, but something had to be done about Mary. Why _should_ he care what she would think? It wouldn't matter, wouldn't change his mind. If she decided she could never speak to him again because of it, then so be it. He had lived without Mary for years. Living without Sherlock was another matter.

She was the only thing standing between him and living honestly and happily for the first time in his life.

Sherlock would surely be home soon. While it was tempting to go straight home, to pretend the world didn't exist for a few more days, he knew something had to be done.

When Mary opened her door, the first words out of his mouth were, "We need to talk."


	10. A Prayer for Which No Words Exist

**A Prayer for Which No Words Exist**

" _You're in a car with a beautiful boy,/and you're trying not  
to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down  
the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and/he  
touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel  
your/heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered  
something you/don't even have a name for."_

They went back to Rome without telling anyone, without giving any warning besides a cursory explanation to Mrs. Hudson on their way out the door.

John had to get out of London for a while, had to escape some of the press and questions everyone felt compelled to ask him. At the same time, he had gotten an idea in his head that he needed to put some of his ghosts to rest, and since the Vermeer was still tucked away in his closet, chasing away the dark thoughts associated with Rome seemed more preferable. Sherlock didn't say a word; it was a silently understood fact that he would come. And John had never been so grateful that he'd never had to explain anything to Sherlock. He always seemed to understand his motivations without interrogating him.

He hadn't even sent Mary so much as a text about the trip to Rome, despite the fact that the talk with her had gone as well as one could expect. She didn't throw any plates at him, and she quite plainly stated that she rather liked Sherlock, thought they _did_ suit each other. John had had no idea how to react to such unfazed acceptance, especially from the woman who had taunted and questioned him about Sherlock so often during the horrible time when he was dead.

The flight to Rome was a way of shutting London off. For a while, it and all its baggage didn't exist, and even those hours of limbo in the plane still felt oddly peaceful.

John didn't know what he expected to feel when he stepped out of the airport, facing Rome again for the first time since everything had gone wrong. But he hadn't expected a creeping sense of contentment. Rage, maybe, or an instant wave of blinding panic, or even sudden crippling sadness. But not this. He caught himself smiling within seconds, believing he'd made all the right decisions for the first time in his life.

Sherlock was quiet through most of these early hours in their trip, acting as if he thought himself a mere background character in John's pilgrimage. He seemed to know that many of the ghosts John was putting to rest involved him, and had likely wondered if John really wanted him there at all. But Rome was tied permanently to Sherlock Holmes, and John refused to let dark memories cloud it for the rest of their lives.

The last time they'd been here, John was more than willing to admit how quickly he fell in love with Rome, but reluctant to admit his love for his best friend. They'd both been reluctant, but not anymore. John loved the place and the person and there was no sense in hiding from either.

The hotel Mycroft had put them in last time always reminded John of military figures, diplomats, and politicians with its marble-floored lobby and flags flying outside. But _this_ hotel, _this_ was Rome as John wanted to remember it, not art openings and limousines of foreign dignitaries, but insulation, history, sun baked stone and heaven. It was a quiet little place, only a few stories tall with a tile roof and balconies with every room. They arrived late in the afternoon, and the way the orange evening sun hit the walls of the hotel, the way it cut through the trees outside, leaving patterns of shade over everything that walked in its sights, created a still sort of fire in all the living things it touched.

While he had booked a suite, John had made no pretenses and had gotten one with a single bedroom, tucked into the corner of the building. Its living room balcony faced the street, the city, practically glowing in the setting sun. But it was the bedroom's balcony that John immediately adored. It overlooked the building's massive interior courtyard, and in the evening was all shade and shadow. When he looked up he could see the sunlight blanketing the world overhead, but the courtyard entered that state between light and dark only found in those few transitory moments between night and day. In the lonely mornings in London, he had mentally referred to the morning transitory period as the gray time, bleak and blue and paralytic as it could often feel. But this, this was a time of torches, the courtyard noticeably cooler from its indirect sun, but still somehow glowing from the slanted light. The brightness above it was such a fiery contrast to the muted warmth and silence below that John thought he could stay on that balcony forever, just watching how the Roman sunlight looked on it through every passing minute of the day. He loved the brilliance of the living room balcony's light too of course, but certain places were meant for certain times of day, and this courtyard existed best at sunset.

Looking down into it he could see the fountain, the soft bubbling of the running water audible even on their balcony, and the scattered wrought iron tables and chairs. There were only a few people taking advantage, sitting around talking softly to each other, one group whispering over a carafe of red wine, everyone seeming to respect the hushed nature of the location. The interior nature of the courtyard blocked most of the noise from the city; only occasionally would a lone car horn or shouting tourist be loud enough for anyone to hear. The exterior balcony would surely be louder, but this one turned the city from a roar to a whisper, and the sense of being lost in the silence of a place surrounded by life and vivacity was oddly soothing.

It even had orange trees shading some of the patio furniture, the fruit hanging from the branches like stars connected into constellations. And the courtyard was so lush with flowers that John could smell them on the breeze.

They ordered room service for dinner, deciding to wait and venture out into the city once they'd had some rest. When the food arrived, the world was in full dark and the courtyard became lit by a few soft lights, just enough to walk around without hurting yourself. Somewhere in the orange trees there were birds singing.

But they ate on the living room balcony, which John instantly decided should always be surrounded by nighttime. It created a view like a wide shot in a movie. Their previous hotel had been tucked between buildings so that all that was visible from that balcony was the square outside the hotel. But this hotel was set up on a bit of a hill, and the result was a view of the city at night, brights lights, glass and metal buildings lit like jewel boxes and ancient ruins illuminated by floodlights as they watched over the sleeping city. Current events and history all in one. There were many cities known for their nightlife and although Rome wasn't one of them, its night had its own special sort of charm, a sort of unapologetic romanticism of endurance and longevity. Instead of wild forests of neon and dance music, the city appeared to be something more reverent, more glittering.

Now and then John would glance over at Sherlock and for a second would feel like he was in a dream state while looking out at the city and was only grounded again when he saw him. He wasn't a ghost, a bad memory, a nightmarish flashback. He was sitting right beside him, leaning back in his chair staring up at the sky, languid, that dreamy state Sherlock entered sometimes when he was lost in thought or when his brain slowed down enough for him to think of blissful nothing for a few moments.

They wandered around the interior courtyard some after they ate, enjoying the privacy the late hour afforded them. Everyone else had long since turned in, and when John looked up at the rooms up above, he saw very few with lights still on. They probably should have been sleeping too, but they had no case that demanded their attention and energy, nothing that required an alarm to be set for the following morning, so it was relatively easy to justify this late night walk. The air in the courtyard was heavy from the smell of flowers, the dappled light through the orange trees surreal in the way it moved over their skin. It didn't matter what they talked about, or if they spoke at all. The only thing that mattered was the overwhelming sense of gratitude John had toward the world for putting things right again.

Back in their room, they left the balcony doors open, and even though the heat crept in steadily during the night, it felt wonderful. Not stifling, not uncomfortable, but heavy and sleepy and wonderful. There was nothing better than standing close to someone on one of these balconies, close enough to touch, always reminded of the fact that tonight you are safe and happy. Fuck the Vermeer, fuck Afghanistan, fuck the Hickman, and fuck all the awful things that had dared to taint Rome. Now it was all as it should be.

The sheets on the bed were so crisp and perfectly white, and the curtains catching in the breeze so diaphanous that the night should never have been allowed to end even if only out of the merit of its own perfection. They could feel the heat on every inch of skin, and instead of inspiring in them a devoted desperation, it created a lazy softened night. Drunk on a lack of sleep and love, the feeling of sedation everyone gets when they finally collapse in bed after staying up too late and traveling too far. John had only minimal experience with road trips in his life, and somehow the English countryside had never felt dramatic or interesting enough to conjure up that feeling of anticipation and contented exhaustion, never enough to make that ache in his muscles feel good instead of tiring. But the Roman sun and all the warmth it left behind when it gave way to a city of antiquity and light was more than enough to make every movement, every second of drifting in and out of sleep and trailing fingers along Sherlock's skin, worth more than any trip he'd ever taken before, and ever would after.

John felt like he could see the entire world from this hotel room, and really, between Rome and Sherlock Holmes, how much more of the world could one really need?

It was more than world enough for him.

... ... ...

Sherlock explained the history behind the Pantheon as they walked inside it. And though it was all monochrome and severe on the outside, on the inside it was positively divine. Sherlock talked about the feat of architecture, the sheer manipulation of the laws of physics required to create such a thing, especially given how many centuries it had survived intact. And underneath all the concrete, the most exquisite marble floor stretching out in every direction, making the footsteps of all the tourists echo. He pointed at the oculus above them, the circle in the dome letting in the light, fading that it was. There had been predictions of rain for that afternoon, and while they had avoided it thus far, the dimming light made John certain they wouldn't be able to evade it much longer. The beam of light would travel across the marble like a sundial until it was extinguished, whether by nighttime or by the impending storm. But the other people inside didn't seem to care. They were just as much in awe. Of course, Sherlock had an intellectual appreciation for it, and John had a pleasant mix of appreciation and romanticized notions of history living on in this place. There were some people who made these ruins their lives' work. There were others who likely thought it a dull entry in a tourist guidebook.

The light began to shift, to change, the familiar effect of clouds crossing the sun, of slowly snuffing it out. But no one made a move to leave, seek shelter in a restaurant or shop nearby. Did anyone even really notice the weather? Did they realize they'd get soaked if they stayed much longer?

When the first drops of rain fell and hit the marble beneath their feet, John stared up in confusion.

"It's uncovered," Sherlock said. "Always has been. Probably always will be."

"They just let the rain in?"

"It's managed under those conditions for centuries."

The sky had darkened enough that the Pantheon was cloaked in that strange half-light specific to summer thunderstorms, a roiling sky and a breeze cutting through the front entry, the sky itself filled with a heavy anticipation. A few other people began to notice the scattered raindrops, many of them confused at first as John had been. But unlike John, as the rain began to pick up, they all started to scatter for shelter. The two of them remained rooted to their place toward the center of the building, John unable to resist staring up above him at the oculus as the rain came through it, heavier and heavier by the minute. The water made a sort of hushed rushing sound over the floors, the black veins in the marble like little rivers, the sheen of water making them look polished. The air had cooled with the rain, similar to a cave, that sense of stone and dampness. For so long John had associated Rome only with dry sun, but it proved to be just as well suited to these sudden claps of thunder and indiscriminate downpours. When flashes of lightning burst to life outside, the echo of their light came through the oculus and made John understand why the old religions had always associated such things with the gods.

As the Pantheon emptied, Sherlock only stood quietly beside John, waiting, no intention of leaving unless John said the word. It didn't matter that their clothes were beginning to turn darker with water, that rain clung to their hair and made the floors slick beneath their feet. They were not driven away by the gods' lightning. Being the last people in this ancient place made them feel exposed, an isolated case plucked from the mass of men, and while John had certainly had times where he thought the gods were somehow involved in life and punishing him, that wasn't the case today.

... ... ...

It seemed like a requirement, somehow, going back to the Piazza della Minerva, with its elephant obelisk and white church. It was only around the corner from the Pantheon itself, and John wondered if he'd created the trip to the Pantheon as a way of putting off the piazza or if somewhere in his subconscious he knew he needed to go back, and the only way he'd have the nerve would be to put himself within walking distance of it. The change was abrupt, the Pantheon and the piazza feeling like two different countries in the span of a hundred feet.

The church was dim and mostly empty as the thunder reverberated off the buildings outside, the faintest glimmers of light reflecting off the golden stars. And finally there was no case standing in the way, no crushing uncertainty, no logical restraint. Finally they hard that kiss under the lights of heaven, and both knew that Rome would never be darkened again. It would always be _this_.

... ... ...

"Knock knock!"

John's head shot up from the book he had been reading when the silence had been broken, his brain instantly singing out warnings of _not Sherlock's voice_.

Mary stood in the doorway, grinning in that overly performed way.

"How did you get in here?"

"Mrs. Hudson let me in." She swept into the room, looking it over with the same attention and fascination she had the first time she'd found her way in. John nodded, but in the back of his mind he could have sworn he had heard no one knock and that Mrs. Hudson had gone out shopping hours ago. Surely he'd just missed her returning home. Mary walked slowly around the room, hands behind her back, and her eyes fell to the open bedroom door. "The mysterious bedroom you had closed up last time, I assume? Yours?"

"No."

"His?"

John paused. "No."

"Oh," she said, a vindictive sort of smile at the edge of her lips. " _Ours_." John did his best to ignore the tone in her voice, and on a certain level, he felt like he couldn't take the snide remarks away from her. After all, she had a right to be mad with him, didn't she? But why did she feel the need to do this, to pick at all the tiny details of his now very comfortable life? What did she want from him? He almost said he was sorry, because he was, a little, at the way things had gone between them. It wasn't every day a woman loses her boyfriend to a man returned from the dead. But even aware of that as he was, he still couldn't wrap his head around why she would even want to be here.

"Do you need something?"

"No."

"Then why are you here, Mary?"

"Just stopping by for a visit. I don't see you at the clinic anymore, since you quit there. Thought it might be nice to say hello. Sorry Sherlock isn't here too. He amuses me." She never sat down, always making rounds, her eyes falling on all the little details of their daily lives. "I came by last week, actually, to see you two. But Mrs. Hudson told me you were in Rome." She halted her steps for a moment to turn and look at him over her shoulder. "I never could get you to go to Rome with me." She didn't say this with the veiled malice she had had earlier, but instead faced this truth with a sort of affectionate chagrin. The tone of voice didn't match well with her posture, but John was grateful even for the attempted pleasantry. "It's a wonderful place, isn't it? When your loved ones aren't dying there?"

"It is."

"I loved it when I first saw it."

"You've been?"

"Why did you think I suggested it in the first place?"

He didn't say what he wanted to – _to taunt me_ – and gave her a defeated shrug.

"Anyway, I'm glad you like it. I knew you would."

Something was off. The way she looked around Baker Street was wrong. Much more like the way Sherlock would look at a crime scene. Is that how she saw this place? A crime scene? A place responsible for derailing a piece of her life? Her detached, meticulous visual examination of the rooms fell always on the details. The ashes in the fireplace, the dishes and mugs still sitting on the kitchen counter top above the cabinet that would never quite close correctly, the edges of the sofa, the dusty spines of Sherlock's books. When John visited people's houses, he always took in things with a cursory manner – there's the table, the sofa, the television – not with such attention to things that ultimately didn't matter. If she had wanted to fixate on the details that meant something, she could have examined the nicks in the mantlepiece where Sherlock had knifed it, the test tube tucked in with the rest of the dishes, the glimpse of a cluttered dresser in the bedroom, the dressing gown hanging on the back of a door. But she didn't seem to see any of that.

John hardly remembered anything she talked about, since he was so fixated on her never-ending circuit of the meaningless details of his life. Perhaps she found them meaningful somehow? Or did she just not have any idea where else to look for something that would give her answers, fill in all the blanks space surely left behind in the wake of – he thought – his weak explanations.

But why couldn't she do some of that sitting down? Her pacing wasn't like Sherlock's, which always came across as urgent and wired, the physical manifestation of a brain operating faster than anyone else's. Hers was slow, easy, controlled. John had seen soldiers walk like that, but usually they weren't captains or majors. Usually they were the ones who ended up going AWOL.

When she left, he finally found a word that sounded right:

 _Canvassed_.

... ... ...

When John had shown up on Mary's doorstep that night, still wired and running on exhaustion and a mad sort of elation, he had expected the worst. Shouting, plate throwing, window breaking, a true sparring match. He hadn't expected Mary, dressed in pajamas, looking barely awake and more confused than angry.

"What on earth are you doing here?"

He repeated himself. "We need to talk."

"At two in the morning?"

John paused, glancing at his watch. Well. That explained the pajamas.

"I lost track of time."

"Yeah, clearly." She squinted in the glare of her porch light and waved him inside. He had been inside her place many times, but he felt like a stranger in it still. Everywhere he looked he saw Mary, but he didn't see any reflection of himself. She stood near the now closed front door, watching him try to decide whether to sit down or not. He opted for standing. Easier to dodge thrown objects.

"Okay, John, what do you want? I thought you said I wouldn't see much of you for a while. Couldn't this have waited till morning?"

"It was on my way home." She stared at him like he was an idiot, and maybe he was, but he knew that had he gone home, slept on it, that in the morning he wouldn't have the nerve, and would be repeating the same patterns indefinitely. "Look, Mary, I've been thinking a lot the last few days."

"Oh Christ, this is your breakup speech isn't it?" Fingers at her temple again, her old tell, frustrated. "Hurry it along then. We're just not meant for each other, I need some space, whatever cliched reason it is? Speed it up."

"It's not a cliched reason."

"So this _is_ your breakup speech, yeah?"

"Sort of."

She sighed, her patience thinning as she crossed the room and sat down in a nearby easy chair. "You've got five minutes."

"It won't even take that long. I don't really know how to say this, though. But I feel like I should just go ahead and apologize now."

"For what?"

"For what I'm about to tell you."

"I already know you're breaking up with me, so I highly doubt anything more will bother me."

"It's the _why_."

"I don't care why."

"You don't?"

"You're a grown man. The _why_ doesn't change how this will end. Besides, I know why already."

"But I haven't told you."

"You don't have to. It's not a secret, John. You were never good at keeping secrets, it's just not in your nature. You wear everything you're thinking on your face. I knew the why as soon as I walked into Baker Street the other day."

John had never felt safe in this kind of silence. It always preceded explosions and gunfire. But even as the silence stretched on, Mary didn't move to throw things at him, and she didn't sling terrible words at him like his parents had done to his sister when they were teenagers. The longer he waited for the first blow, the more he realized that it was never coming.

"You're – you're not getting angry."

"Does that surprise you?"

"Honestly? Yeah."

She shook her head and pointed at the sofa, waiting for John to take a seat. "John this whole mess, it isn't something that happens to ordinary people. Normally people don't come back from the dead. How can I be mad at you for something like this? The person you've always loved is alive. I'd feel terrible if I got angry at you this time. It's a special circumstance, sure. But I saw how much losing him ruined you. You don't think I noticed, because you were trying so hard to be fine, but I did. It wasn't exactly rocket science, putting two and two together. Now, if years down the line he really was dead and you were still incapable of moving on, then I'd probably be angry. But not the way things turned out. I can't blame you. I'd do the same thing."

"Seriously?"

She shrugged. "You can't help who you love. I just hope we can still get along, even though at times we certainly didn't make things easy on each other." He was blindsided, and every attempt at thinking up a response failed miserably. "Why, what did you think I'd say?"

"There was more curse words involved."

Mary only smiled, and said, "Go home, John."

... ... ...

John thought about that night as he waited for Sherlock to return home, and how much it clashed with the woman he had seen today. Was he remembering her as kinder than she really had been? Had her words always been twisted with a cruel tone of voice and he'd just blocked it out? If not, then who was the woman he'd spoken to that night, and who was the one he always seemed to speak to in Baker Street? Mary in Baker Street never held off on a good jab. He couldn't decide which version of her was the true one, and he hated that he'd spent so much time with her and still wasn't able to tell.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and hated himself for being so nervous that he jumped.

"Are you all right?"

Sherlock stood by his chair, looking down at him, a small crease of a frown forming between his eyebrows. John didn't answer him, not directly, but said instead, "What would you think if someone came into your house and never sat down, just paced around scoping out the place, canvassing it? If it seemed like they weren't actually there to talk to you?"

The hand lifted from his shoulder, and Sherlock circled around to sit in his own chair, his arms laid out straight on the arm rests. "Well, I would think they were looking for something." Had the chill been physical rather than psychological, it couldn't have left John more cold. "Why do you ask?"

"It's nothing. Mary was here today."

"Oh, well then I have no idea why _she_ was doing that since there isn't all that much to find."

John tried to smile. "I'm surprised she came by at all, really."

"Why is that?"

"She was nice about everything, but we still didn't part under ideal circumstances, did we?"

"Apparently Mary is someone who can compartmentalize well."

Perhaps that was behind the contradictions between her words and actions, a slip in the compartmentalization of her life. But it still didn't account for her careful study of the flat.

John made his excuses a few minutes later, about needing to get something from his dresser upstairs, and as he ascended the steps he couldn't help but be unsettled, feeling as if he'd gone through life in a clueless haze without Sherlock, and now that he was back, the world was thrown into a hyper-attentive detail. His brain was rewired, aware again, and he had been so trained over the years to examine details as Sherlock did that all of Mary's existence suddenly seemed thrown into question by what was, to an outside observer, a perfectly ordinary afternoon.

It had felt like ages since he'd looked at the painting. It had become harder for the Vermeer to haunt him in the wake of Sherlock's return, now that Moriarty was dead as well. But Sherlock's words _– looking for something_ – echoed so loudly in his mind that a sort of paranoia rose up in him until he saw that the painting was in fact still where he had left it. He hadn't realized just how fast his heart had pounded until he held the Vermeer in his own hands. It was safe. Of course it was.

He felt one step away from madness, and stored the painting away from prying eyes, even his own.


	11. Planet of Love

**Planet of Love**

" _You play along,/because you want to die for love,/you  
always have./Imagine this:/You're pulling the car over.  
Somebody's waiting./You're going to die/in your best friend's arms."_

"You know your front door was unlocked, right?"

The first thought John had wasn't that she was in his flat, but that she was wearing a coat that was far too heavy for the season.

"Was it?"

She stood in the doorway, nodding, her hands in her pockets. "If you're not careful, the whole London criminal underbelly will get in."

But he'd heard Mrs. Hudson lock it behind her when she went out earlier. Had the lock not caught?

Mary had shown up more and more often lately, always all smiles and hardly ever sitting. The more John had thought about that troubling afternoon when she'd first canvassed the place made him see something sinister in every innocuous movement and act. There was evil in how she always stayed near the doorway of the kitchen and a horror in how she would tilt back and forth on her feet like a fidgety child.

Did she always keep her hands in her pockets like that?

"It took me so long to get in here. Never could before Sherlock came back. It was annoying."

He almost snapped at her – are you still pissed about that? – but was proud of his own restraint.

"Where is Sherlock, anyway?"

"He went out for a bit, with his brother, I think."

"You think?"

"I don't keep a GPS tracker on him, Mary." He closed his book, balancing it on the arm rest of his chair, leaning his head against his hand in growing irritation. Some days he was better at dealing with Mary's company than others. Some days he actually enjoyed being around her. But this was not the night for it.

She smirked, looking around the room like she always did. "Sherlock knows everything about everybody, but I know something about you that he doesn't."

John actually laughed at the pure absurdity of the remark. "Sure. Enlighten me, then."

Her eyes lingered on the skull on the mantlepiece before turning to him. "I know that you met Jim Moriarty long before Rome. You just didn't realize it at the time."

The world stood still.

"Yeah, I know you were there. He told me about you. He kept me up to date on a lot of his projects. You told me you were at the Hickman when we were together, and you told me all about it, but you know what? I never saw your name in any of the papers." She never once moved from her perch near the kitchen doorway. "I looked at back issues, when I was investigating you, and you don't show up anywhere. You were a ghost at the Hickman. But I know Moriarty saw you there, and I know he saw you leave with something that didn't belong to you."

John slowly stood from his seat, a whirling sense of vertigo washes over him. "You."

"Who do you think was holding the sniper sights on Sherlock in that hotel room?"

His brain instantly became all calculations. How far to reach my gun, how far to my phone to call the police. But nothing could force him to move. Paralyzed.

"Boy did it piss me off when he turned out to be alive. And boy was it a nuisance pulling this nurse crap while I worked on you. Needless to say I'm out of patience, so where is it?"

John had to force himself to not glance upstairs, a giveaway. "Where's what?"

She rolled her eyes and finally pulled her hands out of her pockets and pointed the gun at his head. "Don't play dumb with me. You know what. Now where do you keep it? Where is it safe from the prying eyes of Sherlock Holmes?" His name came out as a growl in her throat. "Moriarty was going to get it, eventually. But Christ, he always had to be so flashy, had to make everything a spectacle, cause some mayhem, well, and get Sherlock's attention. But I'm not looking for a show. I'm looking for a bargaining chip. In my line of work, that's important. So. Where is the Vermeer?"

"A _painting_. You're doing all of this for a painting? You're part of Moriarty's crime network and you're obviously, what? A contract killer? Don't you have better uses of your time?"

"Correction. I _was_ a part of Moriarty's network. The painting was a bullet point on his to-do list that he never reached. Since he's dead, I have to look out for myself now, and even if you can't sell it, having a priceless work of art holds a lot of sway in the criminal world. After all, a girl can't count on a man to support her, can she? She has to find her own sources of job security. And this? This is a lot more fun than giving people shots and checking blood pressures."

John stared at the barrel of the gun. It wasn't the first gun he'd stared down. There had been so many times in Afghanistan where he'd come within inches of dying by one. But in Afghanistan he had backup, he had a commander and recruits and his own weapon. But his gun was in his room, and there was no secret backup in Baker Street. Just the ticking of the clock on the wall, counting down every second remaining between him and bleeding out on the carpet.

"What makes you think I have the damn thing? It's more likely that it got destroyed."

"But it didn't. Moriarty knew that. I know that. And you know that." John's phone buzzed with an incoming text on the table beside his chair. Both of their eyes went to it, and when John met Mary's gaze again, she was smiling. "But does _he_ know that?" She took a step closer to him, seemed to consider picking up the phone, but instead just observed it from a safe distance like a roadside bomb. "You're in such close quarters, how could he _not_ know?"

John couldn't help but wonder if somehow his phone had on it texts from the long since dead Moriarty that said only:

 _Sherlock Holmes._

 _Sherlock Holmes._

 _Sherlock Holmes._

 _Sherlock Holmes._

They both heard the door open downstairs, heard footsteps that were far too heavy to be Mrs. Hudson's.

"Well," she said, grinning, "why don't we just ask him?"

John heard the creak of the final step, and Sherlock crossed through the open doorway, tugging at his gloves without looking up from them. "John, why is the front door –"

What a scene it must have been to him, John thought. Walk inside your home and finding someone held at gunpoint by an ex. In a different world, John might have found the whole thing comical, but all he could do with Mary glancing at Sherlock was wish that Sherlock had never come home to this at all.

"Hello, Sherlock."

"Mary, what –"

"Don't talk, please, just listen. We're in a bit of a bind here, Sherlock. See, John has something that belongs to me, and I was wondering if you could help me find it. He seems to be needing some motivation."

He wanted to shout at her, saying that the Vermeer didn't belong to her, didn't belong to anyone, but provoking her with semantics seemed unwise.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"You mean you don't know? Seriously?" She looked between the two of them, laughing a little to herself. "Well, you two should be having an interesting conversation later, then. Long story short, Sherlock, I need to finish what my late boss started, and John is making that very difficult for me."

The understanding crept over Sherlock's face like storm clouds, his body suddenly stilled in a way John had never seen. And then the world erupted behind his eyes, that look of rapid processing that John was familiar with from night after night of poring over difficult cases, the moment of epiphany. "Mary, I don't know why you feel compelled to finish Moriarty's work, but your life doesn't have to be like that anymore. We can help you."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't try to give me a redemption arc, I don't want one. Besides, you're helping me already." Mary swung her arm, aiming the gun at Sherlock, and before John could react, she fired.

John shut down, became a soldier again, and blindly lunged for the fire iron by the hearth and with a fierce swing brought it crashing down on Mary's skull.

It was true what they said, about time standing still in a crisis, how it stretched on indefinitely, life captured by a slow motion camera lens. He didn't give a second glance to Mary's body on the floor of his living room – who cared if she was dead or alive, so long as she was unconscious – reaching for his phone and dialing for an ambulance. Not for her of course. He dropped the phone beside him on the floor as he knelt down beside Sherlock, his heart racing as he saw the bloom of blood spreading over his chest and stomach, an ever-widening pool of red. When he got an answer, he shouted into the phone, the voice of the person on the other end of the line sounding tinny through the speakerphone feature.

His thoughts became a stream of consciousness, a fight or flight response that immediately took him back to sun and sand, to explosions and fire. He tried to stay clinical, knowing that if he didn't he would crack.

 _Apply pressure to slow the bleeding, assess for signs and symptoms of hypovolemic shock, no apparent exit wound, likely bullet in the liver one of the most vascular organs in the human body, if the patient ceases to be responsive initiate CPR, pass off as much information as possible to emergency services, aim for one hundred beats per minute._

He used these thoughts to drown out the others. _I am trying to keep someone I love from dying. If Mary ever wakes up again I'm going to shoot her with her own gun. I can't survive another tragedy._

It took all his power to view Sherlock as a patient, as a soldier in a mobile army hospital, instead of the reality: a good man bleeding to death in his own home. The blood had soaked John's hands and clothes, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears.

He wasn't sure when the ambulance came, just that suddenly there were more people in his living room, people making him let go of Sherlock so they could put him on a stretcher. There was shouting everywhere, most of which he couldn't even hear aside from the sensation of being surrounded by a dull roar. There was too much blood, far too much. Mary was still unconscious, and John hoped to god they didn't look too closely and see her. If they did he was liable to tell them she was already dead and they should focus all their efforts on the man they had come to save. Thankfully, the police arrived soon after the ambulance, and as the cops knelt beside Mary, they coaxed her back to consciousness and bound her wrists in handcuffs. John couldn't help but be frustrated that she had survived, and the only thing that kept him from going at her again was a hand landing on his shoulder. He turned around too quickly, and the room spun for a moment, but when his vision cleared it was Lestrade standing in front of him, talking, something about coming as soon as he heard about the call.

Outside, they heard the sound of the ambulance doors slamming shut, of the siren cutting on and tearing through the otherwise silent street. John cast one look at Mary and turned to Lestrade, saying in little more than a hoarse growl, "Keep me away from her or I _will_ kill her. And I won't regret it." Lestrade's eyes, they had the same look John had seen on soldiers trying to talk down their suicidal partners, afraid that one wrong word, one movement might drive them to their breaking point, that the thin ice would shatter underneath their feet.

Finally, he just gestured at John and said, "Come on." And without thinking too much about it, thought overshadowed by the static of the cops' walkie-talkies and the clattering racket of handcuffs and restraints, he followed.

After the fact he would feel a little guilty for getting so much blood on the passenger's seat of Lestrade's car, but at the moment he wanted to paint the entire world in blood, a shouting proclamation of rage. Lestrade followed the distant lights of the ambulance far ahead of them, his own siren blaring. Over the high-pitched scream, Lestrade still attempted to talk, and said, "It's going to be okay, John."

"You don't know that." His voice was surprisingly calm, quiet, more akin to someone who had stayed up sleepless for too long than for someone running on adrenaline and revenge, covered in the blood of the person he loved. "It's bad, Greg. I've seen wounds less serious kill people a lot stronger than him." Lestrade didn't argue with him. "Goddammit, I wish I was in that ambulance."

"You know there wouldn't be enough room. You'd rather have that ambulance full of people working to save him." And as much as he hated the statement of logic, John knew he was right.

"This might kill him."

"Well, can't worry about that yet, yeah? One thing at a time. Let's just get to the hospital and go from there." The car was rapidly catching up to the ambulance.

Try as he might, John still couldn't manage to breathe slowly, every breath coming out ragged, ripping through him with a tightness he hadn't felt since his nightmare flashbacks after the Hickman. "I hope Mycroft makes her disappear."

John saw Lestrade glance at him in his peripheral vision, genuine concern across his face, and maybe even a dash of fear, too.

"Trust me, John, she won't be seeing the light of day again anytime soon. After all this calms down, you'll give a statement?"

"Of course."

"Why did she do it? Do you know?"

John just shook his head, not an admission of ignorance, but a way of saying _too tired to talk about it right now_. He hoped Lestrade picked up on the distinction. There was silence in the car for a while, broken only by the whine of the sirens and the whoosh of air as they flew past other cars. "I can't do this."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't lose him again. I've already lost him once, and I barely survived it. I can't do it again."

Another quick glance, one of immediate understanding. John was sure that was another thing Lestrade would ask him to elaborate on later, assuming any of this crisis was ever truly resolved.

The car screeched to a halt behind the ambulance outside the A&E. They were already wheeling Sherlock through the doors. It seemed every piece of cloth that touched him ran red. John mentally tried to calculate how much blood he'd likely lost by that point as he and Lestrade followed the team inside.

A nurse immediately came up to him, pen and paper in hand, and without preamble asked, "Are you here with Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes."

"He's going to surgery as we speak. Do you know if he has any allergies?"

"He doesn't. No medical conditions either. Just a past substance abuse history, cocaine. He used to smoke. Otherwise he's in perfect health. Blood type AB negative." He had expected the questions, knew that the faster they had such information, the quicker they could help him. The woman wrote down all this, but did give him a second glance after his quick, to-the-point answers. "I can give you his brother's phone number if you want medical records, as I'm sure he has them." He rattled off the number whether she would need it or not.

"All right, excellent. And what's your name?"

"John Watson."

"Relationship to the patient?"

He opened his mouth to talk, but no words came out. When the nurse looked up from her clipboard, eyes scanning over his bloodstained clothes, she met his eyes and at last just nodded before walking off.

John couldn't leave, of course. In fact, it took all his self-control not to go back to the OR himself and scrub in. But Lestrade kept him safely in a corner of the waiting room while he paced, rubbing his hands over his face, specks of dried blood brushing off his skin as he did. There wasn't really a reason for Lestrade to stay, he knew. He probably had work to do on Mary's arrest. But he was staying for John's sake, since the person who usually hung around when John needed someone there was currently laid out on an operating table.

Time passes differently when you're in a panic and are powerless to do anything. It passes quickly and slowly at the same time. Look at the clock, and an hour has passed. Spend an eternity pacing and wringing your hands, and it's been ten seconds. John briefly wondered if it was just as infuriating to Lestrade, but despite the ever-increasing time they spent in the waiting room together, John never opened his mouth to ask him anything, to comment on anything. And Lestrade blessedly allowed him his silence.

It was one of the announcements over the intercom that drew him back to the present, a calm but serious voice saying, "Code blue, OR 3. Code blue, OR 3." When the message clicked off with a crushing sense of finality, John looked to Lestrade, knowing full well they were thinking the same thing.

"John, remember, you're not part of the surgery team, you're patient family."

They both waited, agonizing over every second that the all clear didn't come over the intercom. John ran the numbers in his head, how likely someone was to survive in a code blue level of crisis without dying or suffering permanent damage.

"Besides, we don't even know which OR they took him to," Lestrade said in a hushed whisper like a disciple in a church.

After what could have been two minutes or two hours, they heard it: "Code blue OR 3 all clear. Code blue OR 3 all clear."

The question was only whether they called it off because they were successful, or because they weren't.

Late into the night – when had it truly become the middle of the night? – an exhausted looking man walked out into the waiting room, blood on his scrubs and a mask hanging around his neck. He scanned the waiting room, the handful of people waiting like John and Lestrade, and when his eyes fell on them, he walked up to them.

"John Watson?"

He nodded, his throat feeling tight, waiting for the news he had convinced himself he would have to receive. _Sorry, we did everything we could, but he had just lost too much blood._

The surgeon didn't sit, but ran a hand back over his head, pulling off the cap and brushing his fingers through his hair. His hands were the only pristine part of him, having spent all their time covered in layers of gloves.

"He's going to be in ICU for a bit for monitoring. But it looks like he'll pull through."

Not one for tears, John still found it difficult not to let them rise in his eyes. "Are you serious?" The surgeon nodded. "Was he the code in OR 3?"

"Yes. He flatlined on the table."

"Christ."

"Yeah. He had no pulse. We genuinely thought we'd lost him."

"What brought him back? CPR? Meds?"

"Actually, we tried all the usual things. None of them worked. We still don't quote know what did it, honestly. I don't toss around the word 'miracle' often, but..."

How could one man cheat death so well so many times?

The surgeon drew his attention back by saying, "You're his SO, I'm assuming?"

"More or less," John said quietly. He could feel Lestrade's eyes on him.

"Your name was the only word I heard out of him before we intubated him. You're very lucky. Both of you."

And all John could think was, _you have no idea_.

... ... ...

John told Lestrade to go, thanking him for staying as long as he did, and Lestrade attempted to protest, saying, "John, he's out of danger right now. Don't you want to go home and get some sleep?" John only shook his head, a silent _I'll stay_.

And he did, sitting up in a chair in Sherlock's room all night, in and out of a light sleep spotted with hazy memories of nurses coming in to check vital signs and push drugs through the IV lines in Sherlock's arms. There was a peaceful stillness to all of it, a comfort in the old hospital routines, the comings and goings of the staff and the way the nurses always quietly asked him if he needed anything. He never did, but he appreciated the gesture.

Once, when he woke up out of his twilight state, he found a change of clothes and some food sitting on the nightstand. That was what it took for him to finally realize that his own clothes were still covered in blood. It wasn't clear which of his good samaritans brought these things for him, but he was grateful all the same. They even brought him his phone from Baker Street, wiped clean of his bloody fingerprints, which made him believe that it was all Mycroft's doing, especially since he'd yet to see him during this ordeal.

There was a certain humanizing quality to being able to change clothes, to clean the remaining blood off his skin. He hadn't even realized how exhausted he'd been, how wired with fear and dread. Thank goodness hospitals always tried to keep things calm and still and quiet. Since he couldn't have museums, it would certainly do.

Those early morning hours crept up on him without him noticing, the gray time that used to make him feel so terrible and paralyzed and alone. But this time, the hours made him feel the same way one feels when wrapped up in warm blankets on rainy evenings.

It was during this limbo that Sherlock first woke up, and John automatically reached for the call bell and said, "He's awake," to the woman who answered it. Within the next couple of minutes, the nurse came in, assessing him and setting up IV pain medication for him. Even though on other days John might rise to help, might ask questions about a patient's condition, this time he just stayed out of the way and let the nurse work. He knew damn well he didn't have the mental energy to be even remotely helpful, and as Lestrade had reminded him, he wasn't part of the staff. Neither of them said anything while the nurse talked to Sherlock, but once or twice, Sherlock's eyes flitted over to John and a small smile pulled at the edge of his lips.

Once the nurse left, the room was overtaken by silence punctuated by the oddly soothing beeping of the heart monitor. John sat quietly for a while, Sherlock watching him, as he tried to figure out what the hell someone can say in such a situation. He settled on, "I'm sorry." Sherlock remained silent, but the beginnings of confusion started to appear in his eyes, slightly masked by the haze of severe trauma and drugs. "It's my fault she shot you. She did it to try and fuck with me."

Sherlock gave the smallest, slowest shake of his head. "No. It's her own fault. No matter the reason. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time I got shot, and it won't be the last."

"It nearly was. You flatlined in the OR. You were technically dead there for a minute." Sherlock accepted this news with very little reaction, just a small nod.

"What happened to Mary?"

"Well, they arrested her. That's all I know right now. Maybe I'll luck out and someone will kill her."

"That's harsh."

"I have no capacity for forgiveness where this is concerned."

That remark hung in the air for a moment, although not unpleasantly.

"You've been here at the hospital as long as I have, haven't you?"

"Of course I have."

Sherlock smiled a little. John didn't have the energy to move his chair closer, but it was close enough that he could reach out a hand and run it through Sherlock's hair, feeling like it was finally safe to breathe again.

"What did she want? Mary, I mean? All I gathered was that she had some connection to Moriarty."

John let out a low sigh. "She worked for him. Before he offed himself. Now she's sort of a freelancer. She hurt you because she thought it would motivate me to do what she wanted, but all it motivated me to do was hit her over the head with a fire poker." A small laugh escaped Sherlock's lips.

"What on earth did she want from you of all people? Usually it's the other way around, people always kidnapping and threatening you to get to me."

John shook his head. "She thought I had something valuable to her when I didn't." Sherlock only nodded, and John couldn't help but wonder why he didn't press for more information. Was it because he was tired or because he didn't believe John's denial? "I'm sure your brother will type up a full report on this nightmare. Especially since they got to take down a contract killer. So he'll likely be quite happy. But don't worry about any of it right now. Just worry about getting some rest and recovering."

"It was high time I went through some pain for your sake, given all the times your association with me has gotten you hurt."

"Trust me, I'd go through even more for you." He was beautiful, even pale and tired with dark circles under his eyes and a hundred different IV lines running into his arms.

"You should go home. Get some sleep."

"No. Not yet." He caved, pushing himself up so he could pull his chair closer. And he allowed himself one luxury, one kiss, before he sat down again. It was so much easier to breathe. The early morning light couldn't be anything but relief, but renaissance, the gray light softer than all the muted shades of a Monet sunrise. "I love you, you know. And I'm so glad I don't have to lose you again."

"I know. And I love you, too."

For the first time in perhaps his entire life, John Watson found himself believing that maybe, things really would be okay.


	12. The Gold Room

**The Gold Room**

" _We were in the gold room/where everyone finally gets what they  
want./You said _Tell me about your books, your visions made/of flesh  
and light _and I said_ This is the moon. This is/the Sun.  
Let me name the stars for you./ _...We were in the gold room where  
everyone/finally gets what they want, so I said_ What do  
you/want, sweetheart? _and you said_ Kiss me. _"_

"Sherlock Holmes was shot tonight in his own home by the sole remaining associate of James Moriarty. A contract killer living under the alias Mary Morstan was taken into custody at the scene and was charged with two counts of attempted murder, those of Sherlock Holmes and his partner John Watson. Morstan has been living under her false identity for at least four years, sources say, working as a clinic nurse under a fake license. Holmes was rushed to a nearby hospital for surgery, and we are currently waiting for updates on his status. Holmes has already faced death at the hands of Moriarty's network once, and all of London is sending out their prayers that he will not have to face it yet again."

... ... ...

"Contract killer Mary Morstan was found dead in her prison cell this morning following her arrest for the attempted murder of Sherlock Holmes. Police have yet to release further details, but believe her death was the result of a prison-killing rather than any of the injuries she sustained during her murder attempt in Baker Street. Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade states that as soon as they can release more information to the public, they will, and states that had Morstan survived, she would likely have been convicted to life in prison for her recent crimes, and that there is currently an investigation to uncover the rest of her work with the Moriarty crime network and other acts committed before assuming her alias.

"Lestrade also reports that Holmes is recovering well after many hours of surgery the night of the incident, and that he is scheduled to be discharged home next week. John Watson has passed along his thanks to the public for all their prayers and well-wishes."

... ... ...

After nearly three solid days in Sherlock's hospital room, John finally went home to Baker Street for a while, although he required much persuading. But it was true that there was something comforting about returning to Baker Street in all its stillness and familiarity. It was early in the morning, just past those gray hours, and John had never been so happy to feel the turn of the lock in his front door.

Mrs. Hudson stopped him before he could put one foot on the stairs, beckoning him back to her warm little kitchen, insisting on food and conversation. John couldn't help but think back to the first time he'd been in this room, so soon after the Hickman when he believed his life would be one long endless effort to stay alive without always wishing he was dead.

"Mycroft's already had a cleaning service take care of upstairs," she said as she sat the plates down on the table, taking her usual seat across from him. "He even replaced the carpets."

"Well that's one less thing to worry about."

"John, I was appalled when I heard. Mary had seemed like such a nice young lady. To think that she –" She shook her head, eyes clamped shut for a second in disbelief. "You think you know a person. Makes you wonder how anybody trusts anyone these days. The news was in a frenzy. You should have seen it. But I suppose you were preoccupied." It occurred to John that at some point soon he would need to make a statement to the public to finally put them completely at ease, tell them Sherlock would be fine and make a full recovery. The news stations would likely say the same, but he was sure the public would want to hear it from him directly, and as tired as he was, he felt he owed them that much. "Everyone's been by," she said. "The flat is filled with food and flowers, get-well-soon cards and the like. Everybody has been so kind." There was a certain weight to being loved by so many people, and John felt overwhelmed by it, having spent so much of his life flying under everyone's radar. He'd expected to have a lot to say when he finally came home, but sitting eating breakfast in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen, he found he had no idea what to say to anyone. "John?"

He looked up from his plate with a jerk of his head. "Sorry. Got distracted."

"Can I tell you something? It's a tad macabre, but I feel it needs to be said."

"Okay."

"I'm so glad you were at the Hickman. I know it was a terrible thing to live through, but I'm glad."

"Why?"

"It led you to Sherlock. Sherlock, he always pretended to be happy being alone, but I always thought that underneath all that bluster he was actually an incredibly lonely man. And even with his reputation, you know, aloof, no feeling, I still didn't quite believe that was really who he was. I've known Sherlock for a long time, John. He's been hurt so frequently, and finally he's happy." She smiled, that warm expression that John associated solely with well-meaning grandmothers. "We owe you for that. For staying, for being responsible for him finally being so happy."

John had for so long believed that meeting Sherlock had saved his own life that he had never considered that the reverse might have been true as well.

When he at last ventured upstairs for the first time in a good while, he stood in the middle of the living room looking the place over like a museum exhibit. All the little props that made up their lives, the stupid details that mattered to no one else besides them. It was hard to imagine any acts of violence ever taking place in a room like this, but the absence of blood so effectively eliminated any dark corners that John believed he would never have memories of this room that weren't warmth and safety and love.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, just soaking in his own home. But finally he forced himself to go up to his old room too bring down some more clothes.

Once he was standing in front of the closet, though, he couldn't think of anything else besides the painting tucked away in the suitcase in the back. He dragged the case out to the middle of the room and flipped it open, teasing away the wrappings surrounding it and gingerly lifting the painting out to set it on the bed. He stood over it, hands in his pockets, looking over the brushstrokes wondering how something so small and subdued could cause so much trouble. It had been a burden of sorts from day one, initially being this massive secret he had to bear on his own, and then it had nearly cost him the love of his life.

Moriarty had wanted to cause destruction far more than he wanted the painting. The _only_ reason he had really wanted it was so that he had something to hold over John's head, something to break him, something to create space between him and Sherlock. But Mary had genuinely wanted it for her own practical reasons, a long term career goal. John couldn't decide which was worse. Which was more morally reprehensible? Wanting to hold someone hostage or being perfectly okay with serious collateral damage?

There was a part of him that wanted to hurl the painting into the Thames, to legitimately destroy it so it would be as if he never had it. But he couldn't bring himself to do that to a great work of art. But something had to be done. It was a different matter when all it had done was haunt him, but it had almost cost him Sherlock's life, and John wasn't prepared to ever chance that sacrifice again. At the start of all this, he hadn't had Mycroft on hand, and as he stood there staring at the tiny painted stars, he wondered if Mycroft would help sort things out. He didn't want to get thrown in jail for something like this. Just the thought of possibly being able to get the painting out of his hands made him feel so relieved that he couldn't believe the painting's mere existence had caused him so much grief so many times.

It made the world feel a little more hopeful.

... ... ...

The news continued to refer to John as Sherlock Holmes' partner, and while the ambiguity of the word had felt like a taunt after Sherlock's "death," it didn't anymore.

... ... ...

Baker Street truly became Baker Street again when Sherlock came home, haggard as he was, still exhausted and a long way from feeling one hundred percent. But their rooms seemed to breathe a little more life into him, brought more color to his face. Maybe things just always looked more harsh and painful under hospital fluorescence.

It was a slow few weeks, a marathon rather than a sprint toward recovery. Sherlock was a little foggy from the pain pills and generally seemed content to stay home rather than chase after criminals for a change. And thankfully, Sherlock didn't argue with John about hardly anything, actually listening when John would tell him to eat something or go to sleep.

Every night carried with it a sort of soft, bleary quality, the two of them so tired from the whole saga that they were more than content to just sleep curled close to one another, setting no alarms and taking no cases. The public asked when they would resume their work, but no one was pushy about it, everyone being polite enough to keep their distance. Now and then a well-wisher would leave flowers outside the building, and there was a nearly constant stream of cards and letters in their mail, but no one actively tried to draw them out, for which John was grateful.

Now and then, during these late nights and even later mornings, John would think back to another of Sholto's favorite sayings. The man had always seemed to have a quote for everything. Where he had accumulated all of these, John didn't know, but he always found himself thinking of them, truisms and platitudes mumbled around fires in the desert and shouted over the whir of machinery.

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."

... ... ...

After a few weeks, John effectively put Sherlock on light duty, never letting him wear himself out with cases that would require running all over London, but certainly giving him free reign over all his experimentation in the flat with his microscopes and Bunsen burners. It gave John a chance to deal with some day to day chores, things which seemed so completely meaningless after living the way he had for so long.

One such day, he came home to find Sherlock standing in their living room staring at the wall above the gray sofa. John followed his line of sight as Sherlock said, "It is rather nice looking, isn't it?"

The Vermeer was hanging on the wall. Plain sight. Staring him down. There was an instant panic rising in his throat. Found out when he was actually planning on coming clean about it. But his panics never could last very long in Sherlock's presence, and so he only sighed and said with resignation, "How long have you known?"

Sherlock stared at the painting, hands in his pockets. "Not long. Once the morphine haze cleared from my head, it was obvious what Mary was after. And even though you denied having anything, I know you better than that. Honestly, I'm just surprised I didn't find out sooner. Maybe I just wasn't interested enough in the art side of the case, what with terror bombings to occupy me. But I always sort of believed it got destroyed and that the art world would just have to mourn its loss. But you, you valued the museums so much. There was no way you wouldn't have tried to protect the Vermeer if you could. It was one of your only comforts back then."

He had never felt so exposed.

"I was planning on telling Mycroft once the news about Mary died down. I was going to get rid of it, I swear."

"I've already called Mycroft." John must have looked concerned because Sherlock glanced at him and immediately added, "No, no, no, don't worry, the police aren't going to get involved."

"How long before someone comes to get it because it still doesn't seem wise to have it hanging in the damn living room."

Sherlock grinned, that mischievous glint in his eyes again. "Well, I might hang it in the bedroom eventually, just in case we ever get a client who knows about it, but for now I just like how it looks in here."

"I'm not kidding, Sherlock, when does one of you brother's cronies come get it?"

"Never. There's no need." John couldn't help but feel the anxiety start to brew inside of him again, a nervousness that he had always associated so much with the painting. But he watched as Sherlock got that _look_ on his face, that wonderful one that always preceded his most impressive deductions. "Wenceslas was desperate for something to draw people to her gallery, very desperate."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a fake. Mycroft has already tracked down the forger she used. No sense in making a scene over a fake, is there? No sense in dealing with that publicity nightmare when the painting they already believed to be destroyed is actually a fake."

"How on earth can you know this? How can that possibly be true?"

Sherlock beckoned him closer with a wave of his hand, and John came to rest beside him in that close bit of personal space that had always felt forbidden in the early days he'd know him. Sherlock pointed at a cluster of stars. "Do you remember a conversation we had about artists never really being able to capture the stars correctly?" When John nodded, he continued, "In this case it's a bit more literal. The forger painted a supernova that didn't happen until centuries after all the Dutch masters were dead. It's like I told you. Artists never really capture the stars." John stared at him dumbstruck until he met his eyes. For so long he had felt the constant shadow of the painting, and now he couldn't believe it ever haunted him at all. The information was so impossible to process that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream. "You don't have to carry this weight around anymore," Sherlock said.

John swallowed hard, biting back the hundreds of questions and comments that were rushing through his brain, but whenever he would look at Sherlock, the thoughts slowed down and didn't seem nearly as important as he believed they were. Things would be all right. The book was closed, as always, thanks to Sherlock Holmes.

He crossed the living room to sit down, and after a moment, Sherlock followed, standing near his chair still looking at the fake Vermeer. Sherlock let John sit in silence for a while, to try and put all these broken pieces together.

"I don't know about you, but I will need a long trip out of town after all this has settled. It's going to take months for everything to calm down in my head," John said, staring at the immaculate new carpet beneath his feet.

"That sounds like a smart plan. I was thinking the same thing myself. Good to get out of the English rain when recovering from something like this."

"God, especially after we really deal with the press. I keep getting calls from people wanting to interview us. And I would much rather disappear, maybe let your brother fill in some of the blanks for the papers so we don't have to fool with it. So now it's just a question of _where_ to go hide out from them." He looked up at Sherlock to find him staring back with so much love and kindness in his eyes that John wondered how he had ever thought that Sherlock didn't feel things the way everyone else did.

And with a smile forming on his face, Sherlock answered:

"Well, I was thinking Rome."


End file.
